Gothmans Poker + Life Blog

2011 Review

2012-01-07T09:59:00.000Z

Bit late I know, but I am still getting over the problems I had with my chest over the xmas and new year period, been a bit of a downer really with the only good part of it is losing approx 10lb in weight since mid December, not exactly how I planned to kickstart my new weight loss and fitness program for the new year, but hopefully it will stay off and I can build from here when my chest eventually recovers and I can start training again. Went back to the Docs yesterday and it seems that the infection has now cleared but my lungs are still suffering a bit so I have been given an inhaler to use to ease the current pain and discomfort until it eventually eases and fixes itself.

On the poker front, due to the illness 2011 finished off with a bit of lull as I didn't play at all for the last two weeks of the year. Overall I have to be slightly disappointed. When I went back to SNGS in about March time, I got straight back in where I left off from a few years ago when SNGs were my main game, quickly clocking up over $800 in profit in about 750 games, but then Black Friday came and also stars changed the buyin structure and I hit a severe patch of variance and had about a 2000 game break even stretch, in fact it wasn't until I had the Team Moshman Coaching that I really started to pick back up again. I then had a pretty steep drop over another 300 or so games before starting to recover again. As you can see by the graph I only played about 3200 games over the year, this needs to go up substantially this year if I want to get anywhere near the profits I want to make.

I finished the year only $1901.85 up, but I do have about 18k fpps still to cash in which I will wait until I am back up to Gold Star/Platinum before doing so to get the better value. Its twice as much profit as last year, but still no where near what I was getting the previous few years, again this is down to not playing any MTTs and binking the odd $1k+ payday which I used to do a couple of times a year. I guess I do need to start putting a few of these back into my schedule, maybe even keep a seperate roll.

I still have one eye on supernova this year, but due to illness I have only played 4 STTs this year, so its gonna be a long grind and unless I can move up to be playing 15s/30s by July, I think I will struggle. But for now the plan is tro try and get enough volume in at the lower levels in the first few months that I will have at least a shot at it by the end of the year.

Thats it for now, a short and sweet review.

Rammstein - Keine Lust (need to crank up the sound on this one !!! )

Merry Xmas All

2011-12-24T12:15:00.000Z

Well its that time of year when............well basically, we all get ill !!! I have been suffering with a really tight and sore chest for the last few weeks and have been living on ibruprofen to get by but basically I have been as miserable as hell and not been able to concentrate on anything, so much so that I have not played poker or drunk any alcohol for over 10days. Broke up from work on Tuesday this week till after xmas, hoping that all would be ok, but after getting the xmas food shopping done on weds morning, I spent the next two days either in bed or lay on the sofa, rather than my chest getting better by relaxing it was getting worse. My wife, bless her, eventually had enough and sent me to the doctors on Friday morning. As a typical man I hate going to the docs and I don't think I have been for about 5 years, but wifey knows best. For once wifey was right and it turns out that I have a severe chest infection and also possibly some pleurisy, no wonder I was in so much pain !! Luckily the antibiotics seem to have started to kick in as of today and I do feel somewhat better, my whole upper body still aches from all of the coughing that I have been doing trying to get up some phlegm from the depths of my lungs that refuses to come out. Hopefully I will also get my appetite back ready for the big xmas nosh up tomorrow as I have hardly eaten anything in the last few days either, but at least things are picking up and I should be back to health for the new year and the new goals/persuits.

On the subject of the new years persuits, the plan of possibly hitting Paddy Power in the new year took a blow as I didn't know that you were not allowed to play on your own affiliate links, so thats fooked up the extra rakeback plan on there for now. So I guess the only other option for now is to get my head back down on stars. Due to the serious lack of volume I will almost certainly be back to Bronze star at the start of the year, but that prob won't make that much difference to me anyway. It would be good if I could put enough volume in on the first few months of the year to give myself a realistic chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year should I manage to move up in stakes sticking to my strict bankroll plan which I blogged about last month.

I will def play a bit before the end of the year, but probably not much, only played 88 sngs this month for about $20 profit, but I am am not that bothered at the moment as all I care about is getting my health back on track ready for the new year.

Will probably have a more detailed think about next years plans and goals over the next few days and hopefully post on NYE.

So until then, Merry Christmas all, drink lots, eat lots and do everything to excess, oh and take time out and give a small thought for all those SNE wannabes desperately grinding 20k vpps a day over xmas cos they left it a bit late ;-))

Goth

Greatest song ever made...........

Joy Dvision - Love will tear us apart

November Review

2011-12-03T12:51:00.001Z

November didn't really go according to plan, mainly due to lack of volume. I had a really good start hitting everything in site then the doom switch flicked and went on a $200 downswing, luckily it didn't last too long and I managed to finish the month off it profit, albeit only about $60. As I said the biggest problem was the volume, I still can't seem to get back into the grind and I only played 182 tournies in the whole month. This annoyingly means that I am going to probably miss out on one of the stellar bonuses, I think I need get about 2900 vpps in December to get another $50 bonus, with xmas and all of the pissups coming up, I just can't see me getting to this. Although if I do decide that supernova is a realistic aim next year, I might just try to get to Gold Star ready for the start of 2012. There is a chance that I might just use 2012 for bonus whoring around some of the sites I have not yet joined, amazing Paddy Power is one of those, they are doing a 200% signup bonus at the moment up to $2000. I have worked out that in the 3 months, I could probably get $1200 of that possibly more if I squeeze in some 6 max cash, althuogh I have heard mixed views on where iPoker is going at the moment. The added benefit of Paddy Power is that I am already an affiliate for them, so if I join up via my own link, I can probably get another 25% on top of any bonuses and VIP payments, so it could work out for 3 for the first 3 months of the year, would be nice to turn over about $2000 before any profits at the table.

I guess the main driver of what I do is what stars do the change the VIP system. They really need to do something so that the low stakes grinders who knock out about 3k VPPs a month can get a guaranteed 30% or so rakeback equivalent. The new year will also probably bring in a lot of ex Fult Tilt Regs who are waiting for the new year to start grinding for supernova, this might water the fish pool down a bit, but will at least keep the games going.

I also hear that Bodog has completely anonomised all of the tables, so I can really see a huge exit from that site of all the regs who can no longer use huds and tracking software, so again most of these will end up stars I guess which is quickly becoming the only real place to play.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Full Tilt evenutally comes back and what format it will come back with, will they come out with all guns blazing with large rakeback and VIP deals to attract everyone back and if they do, how many people will really trust them to go back?

I think 2012 is going to be an interesting year for online poker, lots of countries seem to be ring fencing it to their own countries so they can claim their share of the golden pie, unfortuantely I can only see this increasing. The land of freedom will of course come back on the scene, hopefully in 2012, but again, I have a feeling that all of the sites that they are allowed to play on will be completely ringfenced to just the yanks.

Part of me thinks the bubble as burst, the players seem to be getting more and more knowledgeable and the games getting harder, the other part of me sees this as a challenge to improve my own game and try to have my best year ever as again it seems that I am only going to be about $2k up by the end of the year, better than last year, but still no where near the results of the previous 3 years when I was probably only playing 1/5th of the volume that I have put in. Maybe I need to look back through my records and I am sure that they will show that I was winning a lot more playing MTTs that I thought I was and need to introduce them back into my schedule. Although funny enough, I have been playing a few of the $2.50 180s on stars, only played about 5 so far and not got a cash yet, I still gonna give them a go on the side of my 9 mans which I still think will be my bread and butter for a while.

Determined to get at least 500 STTs under my belt this month, then if it look I can get to Gold Star, will play some cash on side. I will probably end up playing a bit of cash anyway, as I think stars are doing another 72 Billion milestone hand promotion, so will def try and bink a bit of that, I'm due some after 18 tabling for 7 hours last time and not hitting a bean !!!

Bit of long update this one, but its been a while, off to the pub now for a nice couple of lunchtime pints before getting back to hopefully grinding a few tournies out.

Something mellow for you to chill out to today from my all time fave godfather of grunge......

Neil Young - Harvest Moon

STT (SNG) Bankroll Strategy

2011-11-06T11:13:00.003Z

The Internet seems to be flooded with cash bankroll strategies, ranging from 30 buyins and take a shot at the next level, to the more nitty, 100-200 buyin approach before moving up to ensure that you never go broke. If you have read my blog regularly over the last few years, you will know that I favour the latter approach, which is why 5 years ago I was 1 tabling $20 STTs and I am now still 9 tabling the 7s lol. You may laugh at this, but even after my failed mass tabling effort last year to get to supernova, I have still made a profit every year and I am still living off my initial £100 deposit into online poker way back in December 2003.

I guess my ultra nitty bankroll approach and the fact that like most people, I have had to dig into my roll to pay bills every now and then ,means that apart from the odd drunken $200NL cash session, I have not played higher than I have. Now that I have decided to stick with STTs for the next year or so at least, I hopefully intend to move up to at least the $30s on stars by the end of 2012.

I have therefore developed s bankroll strategy that if all being well will see me happily taking shots at the higher levels with the big boys and hopefully with the bigger fish too.

I do tend to tweak my plan every now and then but the basics will always stick the same and should you choose to follow something along the same, it can suit most levels and bankrolls.

The basics involve never keeping any more money online than you really need to, which is a rule that I am sure more than a few Full Tilt players wish they had adhered too !! but thats another story. In my case I have a VirginOne account, which is absolutely perfect, as this account is my mortgage/current/savings account all into one, so basically if any of my bankroll is in here, I am effectively getting my mortgage rate in interest, which is currently 3.75%. The account also allows the ability to set up virtual savings areas which look logically seperated. In here I have setup two areas, one called "Poker Stars Bankroll" and one called "Poker Winnings" How I use these areas will be made clearer below.

At the moment, my active bankroll is approx £1300 and I do have to point out that even though I play in $$$ I ignore this and treat it as ££, which to be fair, does make it even more nittier than if my stars account was in $$ to, but thats just a personal way I do things. My Roll is currently split with approx £1050 on stars and £250 in my "Poker Stars Bankroll" savings area. I do also have approx £1300 in my "Poker Winnings" savings account.

While playing the $7s on stars, the maximum I keep online will be £1500. Once my stars account hits £1500 I will withdraw £500. This £500 will split 50/50 with £250 going into my "Poker Winnings" account and £250 into my "Poker Stars Bankroll" account, so in essence if I was starting from scratch and this was my first withdrawal when reaching £1500 for the first time. When I withdraw I would have £250 in the winnings area, £250 in my bankroll area and £1000 online, giving a total bankroll of £1250.

As I work full time, I don't really have to eat into the poker winnings area, but if you are a full time poker player, you could easily adapt the above so that the "Poker Winnings" area in essence becomes your "income"

In my case, I intend to leave the poker winnings area until December 31st and then split the winnings area as follows:-

25% = Payment off Mortgage
25% = Towards a new car (seperate savings account for this)
25% = Luxury Joint Item (something visual my wife and I can reward ourselves with)
10% = For my wife to spend as she pleases
10% = For me to spend how I please.
5% = Miscellaneous (possibly looking at a seperate MTT bankroll for the few I play a year)

Splitting it the way I have above, seems like a good balance between getting the mortgage paid off early and actually seeing something at the end of the day for all of the hours that you put in, which at the end of the day is why we sometimes play 40 hours plus a week on top of a day job, it def isn't just for fun !!!

So thats the spending part of the strategy, the next part deals with moving up the levels. As you know I am very nitty, so if you follow my strategy below, you may feel very frustrated in playing a lot at the lower levels, but if you do decide to follow it, you should never go broke, unless your a mega fish that is !!!

I think the lowest bankroll you should be playing at for the stars $7s is £750 (or $750/€750) and move up as follows:-

At Bankroll of £750 - £1500, Play 100% - $7s.
At Bankroll of £1500 - £2000, Play 75% - $7s + 25% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £2000 - £2500, Play 50% - $7s + 50% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £2500 - £3000, Play 25% - $7s + 75% - $15s
At Bankroll of £3000 - £3750, Play 100% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £3750 - £4500, Play 75% - $15s + 25% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £4500 - £5250, Play 50% - $15s + 50% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £5250 - £6000, Play 25% - $15s + 75% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £6000+ Play 100% - $30s.

Thats really as far as I have looked ahead for now, with my nitty withdrawal plan, I am going to have ro run well and play a shit load of hands to be able to get to be playing 100% at the 30s by the end of 2012, but I think it could be a realistic aim.

One other adjustment that I might have to make if I am putting in a lot of volume is the online level where I withdraw at, so I might amend the max amount I keep online as follows:-

100% $7s, max in account = £1500.
100% $15s, max in account = £2000.
100% $30s, max in account = £3000.

The above should allow for any real bad runs of variance, obviously if you do hit a real real bad run, you have to drop down the level of the game you play when your bankroll hitsthe levels that you came up on, but hopefully as you will be moving up slowly you should be able to adapt better to the higher skill levels that you will probably meet.

So that is basically it, very nitty, but I think it is very effective. If you don't have an all in one mortgage account, I still recommend you open up a couple of online instant access savings account for your bankroll and winnings areas, in this day and age, you should be able to move money around in a matter of hours and if you plan ahead, you should always be able to get some money into the area you require to deposit into your Stars account should you need it.

I hope some people find this article, feel free to comment as appropriate.

Good luck at the tables, this is GothmanUK on stars, signing off for today.

After putting up a Kristen Hersh track last week, I came across I song that I love and had forgotten about:-

Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun

Struggling for Time

2011-10-29T10:03:00.000+01:00

If your looking for a review of October and how the hundreds of games that I have played have gone you are going to be sorely disappointed. Since coming back from a couple of weeks away in Zante, which was by far the most relaxing holiday I have ever had I must say, I have bearly had time to play. So far in October I have managed a whopping 21 STTs !!!

To be fair, I was struggling to put the volume in before I went away, but since coming back, family stuff and work have seemed to taken priority, so much so that I have had to leave the Team Moshman coaching scheme as I was unable to commit to the time. I have to say it was a very positive experience and I have learnt a lot, I would def recommend it to anyone, especially if you are breakeven reg, it can be a very cost effective way of getting quality coaching.

The lack of time has however put me in a bit of a dilemma, I will almost certainly lose silver status this month so will be losing out on a fair bit of value on the rackeback side of things. My workload in November is going to be quite heavy, so I can't see it improving that much, I maybe ablet o get 200+ STTs in if things go to plan, which is not really enough.

I think the plan for now is fit in as many as I can in November and then hopefully have a push in December to get to Gold Star for the beginning of the month. The reason for doing this is that I am hoping for two things. One that the changes in the stars VIP scheme for 2012 will be of benefit for players like myself who log about 2k-5k VPPs per month and two that the changes for cashing in the fpps will be better for Gold Star in the new year so that I can get better value for the 20k or so that I still have remaining from this year which will give the ole bankroll a nice boost at the start of the year.

Talking of a bankroll plan, I have already developed a detailed plan for next year and will be publishing that next saturday, so if you are interested in a mega bankroll plan for part time players who don't need the profit for income, watch this space ;-))

Thats it for this week, gonna try and get back to weekly posts, with the compulsory monthly review, well the good months that is lol

Peace and good luck at the tarbs.

Song for Halloween this week

Kristen Hersh - Your Ghost

Early September Review

2011-09-24T10:20:00.001+01:00

Posting my Sept review early cos I am off on me holibobs, 11 glorius all inclusive days in Zante. The plan is to do fck all....and I mean FCK all. After the hectic tour of Canada last year, we decided that this year was gonna be all about relaxing. So it will be beer by the pool, lots of reading, lots of sunbathing and not a lot else. I've never been on an all inclusive before, so I am just hoping that I don't come back a stone heavier and in need of a new liver !!! Got a couple of poker books to take with me and some note pads. Decided its about time I got more into the maths of the game, so have a couple of books on that and ICM. Also determined to finally read JD Salingers "Catcher in the Rye" always wanted to read it, mainly due to the fact that it Winona Ryders fave book and it will give us something to talk about post "rumps" when I eventually meet her and slip her off to the bedroom............

Anyway, back to the poker. September was my best month at the tables so far, finished just over $500 up at the tables, so it looks like the coaching is now really definitely starting to pay off. I think initially a lot of the agressive play that I was looking at putting into my game was a bit misdirected and I was "over" using it. Now I seem to be be picking my spots and opponents better. Having your big hands hold up as well always helps too.

The one annoying thing was the lack of volume that I put in, considering i had the luxury of being platinum for the month I should of tried to put the extra hours in to get the benefit of the August 10% promotion, but just my luck, I had so much other stuff going on I actually played less games than any other month since I started playing stts, I ended up only playing 332 games, I know I am gonna lose 7 days, cos of the hoilidays, but I still should really be 500+ games at this point. Its a shame really, as I definitely think that the games were a lot softer this month, I was tagging fish at every table especially on the weekends and late evenings. I think this was the main reason for my profit. My stats and graph for the month are as follows:-

Games Played - 332
ROI% = 21.4
ITM% = 45.8%
Winnings = $500.10
$/hr = $10.17

So overall very happy with the results.

Still enjoying the coaching, Lasse has been trying to get me into other forms the game and I did a reverse sweat session where I watch him play some of the 18 man turbos, which he thinks are insanely soft at the moment. Some of the players in them while I was watching were truly awful, so I def think I will give these ago and see how I get on. I did actually play 3 of them this week, but never made the final table in any of um, after getting snap called by 10 7s and JT for 8BB vs my Q3s and 88 shoves. So as you can see the players are truly bad, so just need to get a few hands to hold up and maybe I can bink a few of them :-))

Thats it for now, got some packing to do and tidy the house before my Mother comes round to stay and look after the dogs while we are away. Ain't Moms just great !!!!

Greenday - Wake me up when September ends.

August

2011-09-03T12:22:00.000+01:00

August, although my 2nd most profitable month of the year was really a bit of a damp squib, I finished he month just under $300 up on the STTs and after a bit of MTT cashes and Stellar Bonus the month finished off $400 in profit, however I was actually about $270 up after the first week alone on the STTs, then just hit a bit of a break even stretch.

Also, I did play an MTT on laddies and managed to bink a 3rd place. It was only a €5 86 runner jobby, but I was quite a big chip leader when down to the last 3 and like a muppet, I blew most of my chips away trying to be uber aggressive and bossing the ther two out of pots, one of the guys was a reet calling station, so I was just giving my chips away, but nevermind. Considering it was only my 3-4th MTT of the year, I guess making the FT should of been comfort enough.

The coaching is still going well and I am really enjoying it, learning a lot, but still need to learn a lot more of the concepts being explained to me in a bit more detail, I think its my age, but although I understand what I am being told, the day after I am starting to struggle to remember the exact details of the concepts. My memory these days seems to be getting worse and worse. I am starting to convince myself that a lot of this is down to my fitness levels, the training is going ok at the moment and I have managed to lose nearly a stone, but I think I need to start upping it a bit more. Also gonna change a lot of my diet to see if I clear out some of the fuzzy thinking I seem to have a lot (might be the scrumpy lol) I know for a fact the days when I can hold my concentration my results are drastically better.

So will keep plodding along, have got a holiday at the end of the month, so should be able to recharge the batteries and come back in October even more focused and get the bankroll moving back up again so I can play the $15s fully from November, hopefully then this will give me the foundation that I need to start the new year on the 15s and some 30s which will give me a realistic chance of getting to supernova.

Joy Division - Shadowplay

Bad Timing

2011-08-06T09:27:00.003+01:00

The title of this blog entry is not about my bad timing, but about Stars timings for the battle of the planet promotion. If it ran from Monday- Sunday instead of Sunday-Saturday I would of pissed the weekly 100 STT one lol, however unfortunately for me, I had a real bad day on the Sunday (1st Day) before running uber hot for the next few days, then with only about 13 tourneys to go I was going to place easily in the top 20, I then hit the next bad spell before running uber hot again once the 100 completing, sooooo frustrating, but no iccle extra bonuses for gothdude.

Its good to see Stars pushing the STT promos at the moment, with double BOP payouts next week and and a free $7 entry if you deposit $20, I do like some freeeeee $$$$ Also the promo to get to platinum for 750 VPPs also seems to have bought some more feeeesh to the pond and the games do seem slightly softer at the moment.

It would be great if stars could keep the VPP promo going for an extra few months, although I will be missing out on some of the value as I bugger off to greece at the end of september, so will try and get some extra volume in to make up for it.

The coaching has been going well, still enjoying it and learning plenty, hoping that it will start coming to fruition soon and bring a steady upward swing to the graph, which is obv the aim.

Still playing the $7s for the time being so I can try out some of the changes that I am making to my game, must admit when I first started going back to STTs I thought I would be 18 tabling them by now, but I still can't keep up with 9 tabling too well at the moment, but I am sticking with it. Its strange that somedays 9 tables is easy and I can follow everything and other days I seem to be struggling to keep up with everything, I guess its down to concentration levels which vary from day to day and hour to hour, something I def need to work on.

Gonna play the $30k 100fpp VIP event tonight, keep forgetting about these, they are a bit of luckfest so I will probably try and chip up early with a few gambles, if it don't pay of, nay bother.

Still enjoying it at the moment especially as the profit for the year has gone back above $1k, which annoyingly it was 1/2 though May !!! Still got about 10k fpps which I have not done anything with but will probably be saving these till the end of the year. I am thinking about trading them in for 500fpp $7.50 steps tickets as this gives a lot more value, although if the platinum promotions keep going, I might just buy the $650 cash bonus when I get enough fpps, not to sure yet. If I knew stars were going to do steps promos for the WSOP main event next year as I do intend to go and play in 2012, It could work out a good way to get a seat. Alternatively grind them up to the level whenre you can trade them in for the $215 tourney tickets and try and bink summat bigger lol, who knows, I guess i'll decide later in the year.

So for now, its keep on grinding, its not an easy life at the low stakes ;-)

Snogged one of these babes back in the day looool

Bodysnatchers - Easylife

Losing but loving it....

2011-07-06T12:45:00.002+01:00

Well, not acutally loving losing $$$$ lol but strangely enough, even as my downswing continues and I am quietly confident about my game and I am enjoying it. Even the sick sick beats that come STT after STT comes with a quiet "of course" rather than a What the F%&£ and bits of desk flying everywhere. The opposite of course comes when I dish out the sick beats, which if you shove and steal as much as I do, you are bound to deal out the muff, jumping out my chair when I river my one outer screaming, take that you premium hand calling mother f*^$er loooool

Still not sure wtf has changed, the downswing still seems to have stemmed from Black Friday, so it must just be less fish around. I Reckon I have proably dropped about $600 since the change, but I am happy with my game and to be fair its not so much the beats that are the problem, its just the walking into bigger hands all the time which is the real issue and seems to be happening more and more each time I play. I seem to be getting a lot more of my steals shoved over than normal as well and can do nothing but fold and whinge. *sighs.

On a positive note, I have had my first two coaching sessions and they seem to have gone well, I am very impressed with his overall knowledge of the game, in particular odds and percentages and puts across his reasoning for doing things very well, will not mention who it is at the moment, but he is a very well respected member of the poker community and pretty decent winner. I just hope that the changes I have started implementing following his advice so far start to come to fruition, othewise as its a % profit coaching deal, I can see me being dumped before the end of the 4 month contract, which is fair enough. By my reckoning, with the quality of his coaching, I have already had approx $1000 worth of tuition and due to losing the first two weeks running, not paid a bean. I think the main stumbling block is the 150 stts a week that I am having to play as part of the contract, as I work all day, this doesn't leave much time for study and session review and I am also having to carry on 9 tabling, which is not ideal when you are trying to implement changes into your game that you have not tried before. However the learning experience has been excellent and has really helped me change the way I think about the game. I think the sessions have also made me think about life in general and to try and stop pussy footing my way through it with no clear direction of where I am heading or want to be. Also trying to be the best at what you do in all walks of life, it your gonna do it, might as well do it well. My new motto now is "try to do something as good as you can, then step back and think how you can do it better"

We are off for a few days holiday down Cornwall to relax after tomorrow, but once I come back I really want to focus on improving everything I do and have a lot more drive and motivation. Obviously the health and fitness part of this will be one of the main areas of attention, but things at work also need to change, with a lot more productivity in the right areas required.

Some interesting times ahead I think, lets hope it all goes to plan.

I notice Rammstein are touring the UK again next year in Feb, so will be def be off to see them again, just the greatest live act ever !!!

Rammstein - Engel

Struggling

2011-06-12T12:12:00.002+01:00

Just can't seem to get a decent run together at the moment, its so bad, I actually posted my first negative month last month, which I thought would never happen playing sngs. The run of bad variance (maybe bad play) really does effect you mentally and you just don't want to sit down and grind out another 20 or so STTs for fear of blowing off another chunk of your roll.

Only played 99 STTs this month, which is not good preparation for when I start getting some coaching as I have to do 150 per week, the way I am running at the moment, I think I will end up in the nuthouse after the minimum 4 month period lol....Hopefully they can identify some simple major leaks that I obviously have that can stem the freefall that I seem to be in at the moment.

Gonna try and get at least 30 in today and try to use next week as a test run to see if I can get 150 per week in without losing my marbles.

Have had the dreaded Man Flu over the last week as well, which hasn't helped the new fitness plan, although it has killed my appetite, so have had no takeaways or nights out in the pub and to be fair, I have lost 5lb due to it, which is better than it was when I was able to get some swimming in !! Should get below 15st again by the end of the month if I can stick to even 1/2 my goals, so at least that part of my life is back on track. Next goal after that will be 14 1/2 stone by the end of July. Its strange, but I feel I have really turned a corner on the health front, I think the stark reality of how much weight I have put on over the last 15 years has at last kicked in and I know now if I don't do something soon, I will not be making my 50th Birthday.

So lets try to keep things on a positive front, even if the poker is running like a dog......

Old Skool Music today

PWEI - Ich Bin Ein Auslander

Had a Holibob !!

2011-05-24T21:42:00.002+01:00

Not posted for a while, one reason being that I have been away on Holiday for a week in the beautiful Yorkshire Moors. It was the first time we have take our two new rescue staffies away on there hols since we got them in November last year. We weren't sure how they were going to react, but I can safely say they absolutely loved every minute of it. We hired a wonderful cottage in the middle of nowhere, with just the farmhouse and a few other smaller holiday lets. The nearest village was over 2 miles away called Glaisdale and that only had a butchers, general store and the mandatory pub. It really was heaven. We tried to pack in as much as we could during the day and never left the doggies on there own for a minute, where we went, they went: including the train ride on the North Yorkshire Moors Steam Railway. Its a journey we have always done with our previous dogs where we jump on the station at either Pickering or Grosmont then ask the driver to stop at the unmanned platform called NewtonDale Halt. There is then a beautiful 3 mile walk through the woods to the next station called Levisham, I highly recommend this to anyone, if you do decide to give it ago, be careful to check the train times to make sure you don't end up with a 2 hour wait at Levisham for the next train to return you to your car !!!

While I was away I thought about poker quite a lot. The main thought was basically: is it really worth all of the effort I am putting into playing for what now seems to be small profits. I think all forms of the game MTTs, Cash and SNGS have all moved on to a much higher standard and to be truthful, my game just hasn't. This really came to light looking at my results in April, where over a couple of hundred STTs I was actually slightly down at the tables which I thought over that large a sample I would never have that happen. It has also been the same story this month in the 150 or so STTs that I have played, again slightly down at the tables and only the reload bonuses and the Stellar awards giving me an overall profit.

My thoughts led me to the conclusion that I either just have to stop putting the hours in that I do and just go back to playing for fun, mainly low stakes MTTs, with the odd STT and sats into bigger MTTs. Option 2 is to pull my act together and get a coach. It was not an easy decision as I have quite enjoyed not having to stick to a routine every night that revolves around poker, but I have decided that I really do want the extra $$$ to pay my mortgage off as quick as I can and for this to happen I really need to concentrate more on the studying side of the game than I do.

I look back at what I have called "study" in the past and to be honest it has just consisted of watching cardrunners vids and reading through the forums. It is one thing to watch and read, its another to learn and adapt and I think that I have learnt a lot about poker by doing this, but never ever really learnt how to incorporate this extra knowledge into my game and improve overall as a player. This is the reason why I have decided to give a coach a go. I have contacted a site and have an offer with them which I intend to take up the next week or so.

Lets hope by the end of the year I can sit back and say, well I listened, I learned and now its paying dividends and have a decent profitable year. I am not looking to tear up the world, in fact I think all that I am after is a modest $750-$1000 a month in profit from the tables from approx 600-800 STTs and the odd MTT. That along with the rakeback and bonuses would make me more than happy.

I have also started back on to a new fitness program which has already started going well and I feel a lot better after only a few days. I weighed myself for the first time yesterday and came in at a whopping 15st 10 !!! which I think is only 2 lb lighter than the heaviest that I have ever been.

I will obv keep you all informed of my progress on both fronts.

Todays song is quite apt and if you wanna get stoned off your tits, the album "Sleeps with Angels" which this is off is a damn fine choice.......

Neil Young - Change your Mind

America’s Live Casinos thriving After ‘New Crackdown

2011-04-21T19:23:00.001+01:00

With class warfare in full, bloody battle across the United States of America, the federal government, the driving force of the country’s 14-trillion-dollar debt, does not take kindly to individuals flying under the IRS’s radar. Well, unless you are General Electric or another corporation that ships thousands of jobs overseas while being anti-oil, of course. Then you have carte blanche to evade taxes and “gamble” with the welfare of the country. But for everyone else, though, if you make a dollar, you better be sure to give the government its 50 cent.

The FBI’s crackdown on the big three Internet poker sites—PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker—has resulted in a mob-like influx of indictments, 76 bank accounts frozen in 14 different countries, and thousands of players—if not more—in America suffering an L due to their suddenly non-working sites.

This is not new news. In the poker world, the contradictory nature of America’s principles vs. America’s practices has been well noted for over five years. But it does make people wonder what’s next. These sites are poker sites, but a slew of bingo rooms and game-specific sites are still out there. A word of advice: Run, run, run for your lives!

If there is any silver lining encompassing this dark cloud, it’s that live casinos have been the beneficiaries of massive traffic since the FBI bust. Casinos from West Virginia to California have been reporting increased action. Many of these casinos were suspiciously abreast of the shutdown, or so it would seem, as they began offering increased poker tournament action.

When the poker rooms shut down, the online players showed up in droves to compete in live casinos.

Now, this isn’t a conspiracy-laden piece. It’s the Native Americans—usually exempt from taxes—who benefit the most from live casino action. But the timing does make some wonder if there’s anything on the back end for the state governments or for the federal coffers besides the obvious increase in immediate tax dollars.

The fact that players can do down the street in thousands of towns and cities in America and play any type of game they want leads some to question why they cannot do the same in the privacy of their own homes.

According to the government, someone playing online roulette might be funding a terrorist organization or helping people to traffic drugs, but since the owners of Full Tilt and other sites have been thoroughly vetted since 2006, that doesn’t wash.

Think about it. ShoveThisDrug-FilledCapsuleDownYourThroatAndCrossTheBorder.com wasn’t targeted, not that any such site exists, obviously. FundATerrorist.net is also not a viable option for Internet gamers. The American government is so involved in the life of its citizens since the Patriot Act that any “shady” enterprise instantly has the lights turned out.

The fact of the matter is that government already knew who was behind these big poker sites. So the excuses being made are asinine.

Meanwhile, America’s live casinos are once again thriving. People claiming huge winnings are immediately prompted to pay in their “fair share” (probably 50%, at the least) before even leaving the doors. And there you have it.

Unfortunately, the live casino crowd is going to die down. Internet gamblers will find a way to play online, and the government has no right to be in their business. The massive government will try to make it its business, but the folks will win.

Black Friday

2011-04-17T15:40:00.002+01:00

Well it came as a bit of a shock, but as you are all probably aware the FBI/DOJ swooped hard on the major poker sites on friday and took them down. I real feel sorry for the citizens of the USA, they are supposedly "The Land of the Free" that is as long as the corrupt suppressive government can tax the "free" part. This in my opinion is what it is all about, nothing to do with fraud/money laundering, which may in part be going on, but I feel all they want is their massive cut of the golden egg that is internet poker.

So now the poor american players probably can't even get to their funds, let alone play poker which I imagine for 1000s this is currently their only form of income.

When the story broke I, like most people hit the panic button and put a withdrawal request for most of my Stars bankroll. However, after reading stuff on the forums, decided to cancel the request and withdraw a lesser amount which would still allow me to carry on playing at the volume and level that I am currently.

My inital thoughts was that it was the end of the world in terms of internet poker, but after giving it more thought, the majority of the americans that were playing were probably the better ones that carried on regardless of the inital ban a few years ago and to be fair, I think if anything the europeon fish on the whole are fishier than the yank fish lol.

For the time being, I am still going to carry on playing on stars and see what the play is like without the yanks, I am hoping that the games will get softer.

The month so far has been a bit of a disaster and I am about level overall as I have hit a huge downswing and have been struggling to hit many wins when heads up with only 9.7% 1st places so far in the 134 games that I have played (yes I know the volume is shit too lol) The 17% 4th place stat also tells its own sorry tale.

Still gonna plod on for now, but the lesson to be learnt from the events on this friday is to never keep any more of your poker bankroll online than you have to to play the stakes that you do. It actually makes a lot of sense to do this anyway, its better for us to have the intrest on the money that the sites.

I guess there was only one song I could choose for our american buddies today, maybe all of you should take advice from the middle eastern countries at the moment and take up arms against your own government as they seem to be shafting their own people right up the chutney locker at the moment....

The Doors - The End

So Far so Good + March Round Up

2011-04-02T10:06:00.002+01:00

March turned out to be a decent month. As usual did not put in the volume that I had hoped for, mainly as ever due to going out on the piss too often *sighs. I managed to play a total of 304 STTs split roughly 50/50 between the 5s and the 10s. Stats for the month ended like this.

STTs Played = 304
ROI% = 18.4%
ITM% = 43.4
Winnings = $464.50
$/hr: = $11.12

Overall very happy, although it was a strange split. I deliberately fire up the tables so I do not know which table is a 5 or a 10, however I played 150 STTS at $5 and was -1.3% ROI and down $10.50 overall. But at the $10 buyin I played 154 with an ROI of 28% and $475 profit...what the fck is all that about !!!! I obv ran super hot on the 10s and super shite on the 5s lol. I guess I should just be grateful that it wasn't the other way around.

So for April, I really do need to up the volume, I know I keep saying this, but ffs, get your fat arse into gear Gothy and just foooking do it. The plan this month is to play a minimum of 600 STTs. I am now gonna move up to exclusively $10 buyins. With the amount of bank holidays that we have in April, this should be achievable. I can only hope I run as good in them as I did last month as that could be some good wonga and bankroll booster. On the subject of bankroll, I am proably gonna have to take £500 or so out of it to pay for some stuff as we went waaaaaay over budget doing the bathroom up and I also want to take the wife for a couple of days away to Cornwall to watch a play at the Minack Theatre which is one of the things on our "Things to do before we die" list.

I have also took a chunk of my bankroll out and opened up an 888 account to start playing some MTTs, I really do need to play these as to get a really great profitable year it does help if you bink a big score in a decent tourney. Gonna try and fund the MTT entries by playing the $5 stts on there and doing some sats into the bigger tourneys. There are some crazy aggro fish on that network and if you pick your spots you can chunk along nicely. I did play the $33 $50k challenge last night, but went out after squeeze shoving in the BB with KJsoooooooooted and the fish who flatted in the SB tanked and called with AQ, YES, I know it was a good call, but for ffs, I want cheeeeps....

Overall life is good at the moment, apart from work which is boring as shite, but I guess thats what work is all about. Would be nice to bink a lotto win to pay of the mortgage and then bunk off to be a full time sng monkey junkey. You never know, gotta be innit to winnit....

Enough bollocks for this week,

The Cure - LoveSong

Quiet Times on the poker front

2011-03-06T20:23:00.002Z

Last week I planned to stay in and try and grind a minimum of 30 stts a day, however these plans seemed to go out the window and I ended up going out on the piss for 4 days out of the 7. This is obv not good for the health, finance or poker bankroll, in particular as I have been running well and winning, I could understand it if I was losing and looking for an excuse not to play, so not sure what that is all about. Must admit, I had some fun on the nights out but I really need to be a lot more disciplined if I want to have any chance of hitting any goals that I set.

Hopefully from tomorrow I will be able to put my head down and get some hours in at the tables and also get my arse back in the pool at lunchtimes at work and maybe even get back on the weights as everything seems to have shrunk...well except for me belly that is.

Looking at back on February as my first month back on the sngs, I have to be happy, my stats finished as per below:-

STTs Played = 393
ROI% = 11.0%
ITM% = 42.7
Winnings = $237.00
$/hr: = $4.39

All of the 393 tourneys were the $5.5 regular 9 man tourneys on stars. Overall I think I ran quite well, I had some sick sick beats, but to be fair, I gave a fair few out.

For March, as I have only played 9 stts so far this month, most of them at the $11s I intend to try and complete 400 for the month, mixing up the 5.5s and the 11s, then in April if all is going ok will be playing the 11s exclusively. I know for a fact that supernova is gonna be beyond me this year unless I really crank up the buyins and volume, but if all goes to plan, by the end of the year, I should have a bankroll whereby next year, I can put a real challenge in for supernova or even 200k supernova.

The house move has been put on hold as the house that we were really interested in has been sold and also, as expected, the valuation on our house was not as high as we would of hoped. We have therefore decided to stay put for the next two years and renovate our current house a bit more, starting with a new bathroom which we should be having done in the next few weeks. I'm not really into DIY, especially as I am shite at it, but I must admit, I am looking forward to changing a few things and putting more of our stamp on the house.

Back on the poker front, prob won't play any stts today, gonna try the $11 turbo muff fest to try and get into the stars $5million guaranteed in 15 minutes, hopefully muffing my way through that and having a good run later on. You never know, could be me driving the add first prize of the lambo soon :-)

Good Luck all who are in it and I hope if I can't take it down, someone I know can bink a biggie.

Nirvana - In Bloom

Quietly Satisfied

2011-02-19T10:04:00.002Z

Dangerous to say I know, but things are going ok at the moment, I couldn't stop lookign at my results in the end, its just too tempting lol, but and I am quite happy with my play and knowing how I am doing hasn't had any negative effect. Still not able to put in the volume that I would of liked and I think I have only played about 280 $5.50 sngs this month. I have stayed at 9 tables for now as I still don't feel confident of adding more as I think it would affect by roi too much at the moment. I am sure I will get used to it and add more as time goes by, but for now I think 9 is going to be limit for another month or so. The problem with only doing 9 tables and playing the 5.50s is that I am not clocking up enough vpps. I have only knocked up about 780 this month, so just crept into Silver and probably have no chance of reaching Gold by the end of the month. I think therefore my over nitty bankrolling is going to have to change. Even though I set out my bankroll rules on a previous post, I have not been sticking to them and I am still being over cautions. I have £2.1k in my poker roll ($3.5k) and I am still playing the 5.50s lol. So I have decided I am gonna move back up to the 11s in March and take it from there. If I can crank up the volume on them and still get a similar roi, all will be rosy again.

So the aim for the rest of this month is to just keep plodding on at the same rate, aiming to complete about 400 this month, will the aim to double the volume next month. I think Supernova this year is already out of the window, but you never know, if I can keep winning at the rate I am now I may be able to move up the stakes later in the year and play more of the 20s and 30s. I am not sure where the split is that makes the levels mainly decent regs, but I suspect that is is around the 33s mark, as I am sure I have heard this is where the difference starts on the turbos, which again is something I may have to dip my toe in the water at, mainly because over the 280 I I have played so far this year I am averaging about 55 mins per game !!!

On a personal front, this month has seen us start to possibly think about moving house. The problem that we have is that we love where we live, in a nice village, in a cul de sac around 20o yards walk from the village square where there are local shops that inlcude a small coop, butchers, greengrocers, off licence and more importantly my local pub, two other pubs, a chinese, an indian and also a chippie. No wonder I am such a fooking lard arse !!!

The only reason we have even thought about moving is that our garden is a little on the small side and its also on a slant and since we have taken in a couple of rescue staffies at the end of last year I would like to see them tear arsing around a bigger garden and having tons of fun. The only other reason is the fact that, although the house is big, it doesn't have a downstairs toilet, which basically means that the drain on the patio by the kitchen window is my makeshift urinal when I am mass tabling and the missus ain't too please about it !!!!

Ideally we would love (or I would love) to stay in Alvechurch as I have been here for 19 years now and really feel like it is my home. But trying to find a bigger house with a large garden here is probably gonna be beyond our budget and at 43, I don't want to take out another 25 year mortgage, but just want to keep the length the same.

We are having the house valued on Friday and even went to look at a house in nearby Bromsgrove last week, which to be fair, was very very nice. But we are still not sure and can't really do anything until we get the valuation back on our current property. As we have only been here 4.5 years, I highly suspect that it will only be worth what we paid for it, which isn't too bad, but will severely restrict our ability to move up the chain a bit.

The other option that we have thought about is to stay put and put some time and effort into the house that we have, we can't expand the garden, but could def spruce it up a bit and make it better for the doggies. We also have the option of converting the garage, I don't think that we will be able to afford a full extension, but we couild possibly be able to convert the garage into a gym type room with a toilet and en-suite shower room, which could also be used as a bedroom in the future. I think this would add a fair bit of value on the house for when we eventually plan to retire and move into the countryside nearer the see (long way off !!) The only problem that I can see is that all the services terminate in the garage and I can see that the gas feed disappears into the concrete floor in the garage and pops up fook knows where, the same I think for the electrics and water. I am sure these can be diverted, but its just gonna add to the cost and will also prob need a new driveway as this will almost certainly have to be dug up !!

I guess with all the above happening, I am really gonna have to crank up the stakes and the volume and bring in more mooolah !!!!

I guess as this weeks post is all about moving up and moving house, there really can be only one song, I know its not the hard rock that you expect from me, but I do love the band, so there !!!

M People -Moving on Up

SNG Grinding

2011-02-08T12:40:00.004Z

Well, following on from my last post, I have had mixed results on my start of grinding out sngs. As I think I mentioned in the past, I used to mainly play sngs on stars (GothmanUK) but never really more than 2 tables at once. Last year I found I could comfortably 15 table 50NL Fullring cash without losing track of what was going on (although my results may beg to differ) However over the last 7 days or so I have been 9 tabling the $5.50 regular 9 mans on stars and have been struggling. Its not really the results that I have been struggling at as I am in profit over the 150 or so games that I have played, its keeping track of my stack sizes in relation to the blinds that I am finding difficult. Losing track of the above has the result of missing obvious shove opportunities and also sometimes getting too short in relation to the blinds and losing any fold equity.

I am currently tiling my 9 tables so I have them all in view, I think I may have to experiment with different options, maybe try cascading which I normally hate. Maybe even just moving the tables that are getting large blinds on to my 2nd monitor so I am more aware that I should be concentrating on these tables more. My only worry is that if I start moving tables around that one table may end up popping up behind another and I might miss it totally. I am sure I have sat out one whole tourney already doing this !!

If anyone has any advice on the best setup for mass tabling sngs I would be really appreciate any comments as I know I want to increase it to 18 by the end of March and I seem to be disappearing up my own arse at the moment.

One thing I had forgotten was how sick the beats are at sngs, being mainly a push strategy at the end game I can't believe how many times I have been called by Ax when I have Ax+ and they hit their 3 outer. In fact after one session of excruciating suckouts I even thought about giving up poker all together as the profits were just not gonna be worth it. However I seem to have gotten used to it now and to be fair, I do laugh my socks off when I also hit my one or two outer on the river, so I guess its all swings and roundabouts.

Another thing I am trying not to do is look at my results too closely at the moment, so I can't update my P+L on this blog until the end of the month. I am hoping this way I won't go on monkey tilt after a few bad sessions. Hopefully I won't get an "insufficient funds in account" message pop up when trying to auto join the next SNG lol. If I do, I think I will cry.

I know one thing for sure is that I will have to be playing the $11s by the end of March to stick any chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year, I have already missed a month by not playing on stars in january and at the moment I don't even think I will reach gold this month due to too much other stuff going on. I think the most I have played in a day so far is 40, which only equates to 110 VPPS and I think I need to average about 278vpps per day over the whole year to get to supernova (or summat like that)

I also have only just noticed the Battle of the Planets promo which looks pretty cool, I am hoping I can cash in a few of those a couple of times a month, it will definitely be a nice boost to the bankroll if I do. I might try to keep track of my points and post them up as part of a monthly round up as I do love stats.

So in summary, not going too bad at the moment, just need to increase the volume, hopefully make gold by the end of the month, with a view to getting close to platinum in March and April.

Placebo - Pure Morning

Deep Thoughts and decision made

2011-02-02T00:37:00.002Z

January didn't exactly go to plan, the excellent start followed by the poor middle of the month continued in that vain and I finished the month about a buyin down at 10NL. I know I only played about 12.5k hands for the month but I have come to the decision that I am completely wasting my time doing what I am doing. If I am going to put in a decent portion of my spare time playing poker, whats the point in doing it for nickel and dime shit. I don't go on msn chatting with my m8s while playin MTTS anymore which I deeply regret as I miss them all so much. So if the only reason to play poker is for money, why the fuck after playing the game for nearly 8 years have I regressed to playing 10NL cash, when in 2006 I was playing $20 sngs and make a profit at it WITHOUT rakeback. I know the games were easier then, but it really is time to get my priorities right and either play the game for the enjoyment and get on MSN and have a laff or start playing summat that I can know I can beat and get some decent $$ at.

Its not just the above that has been bugging me, I have been thinking long and hard about my failed attempt to get to supernova last year on stars. I really think I let myself down and failed, I kept blaming running bad, but at the end of the day, I just played bad. 50NL full ring should be easily beatable by someone with my experience, but I managed to donk off almost 2k over 300k hands chasing the points for supernova. I know I left it late to start, but I should of still broke even while chasing the bonuses, but I didn't.

I have therefore decided to go back to my roots and do what I know for a fact I can win at in the long term and at worst break even at and that is SNGs.

To be fair, I I have not tried multitabling much playing sngs and my plan over the next couple of months is to build up to 18 tabling the £11 9man regular tables on stars. Hopefully I can build up enough points that by the end of March, I will have a realsitic chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year. The aim then for next year will be supernova 500k. Then in 2013, Supernova Elite. I know to get to Elite I am going to have to move up the stakes a lot and also get involved in the turbos, just to get the volume in, this is obv gonna be an issue, as all my success on stars has been on the 9 man regular tables, so some adjustmants will have to be made of course.

In preparation for the change I tried 9 tabing the $5.50s on stars tonight. In 4.9 hours I managed to knock off 37 sngs and managed to end up $53 in profit. So not a bad start. I did only managed to get about 105 vpps though, so will struggle to get to gold by the end of the month as I know I can't put 5 hours a day in cos of the dogs a that moment, but as I said, hopefully I will build up to 18 tabling. Will carry on with 9 or the next few days, then start adding a couple till I feel comfortable at 18. You never know, if I can can get a 2nd 28inch monitor, I might be able to go to 24 as I currently have 1 28 inch and 1 24 inch.

So Ideally the plan for this month is to get to Gold playing mainly the $5.50s with a few $11s thrown in. All being well, can then start in anger on the 11s in March.

I have dumped £300 into my stars account today for this new challenge and I already had about £100 in there. Will probably not top it up while playing the 5.50s as hopefully I will not need to, but unless I run like god, will almsot certainly need to add a few ££ for when I move up to the 11s in March.

So in a nutshell, the 10NL challenge is off and the 2011 Supernova challenge is back on (gutted I wasted a month grrrrr)

The new bankroll plan is as follows:-

SNG Buyin.........Min roll Comments
$5.50.............£1000 50% of roll stored in savings
$11...............£2000 50% of roll stored in savings
$22...............£4000 50% of roll stored in savings, 50% of play to be at $11

I think if I can get enough hours in, the above plan should potentially get me to supernova by the end of the year. I know I am not going to be able to keep my current ROI of just over 20% in ~900 games. But even if I can get close to 3-5% its gonna be a lot better than my cash turnover over the last few years.

Will also try to fit in a few MTTS to help boost the roll, to be fair I have not played a single MTT this year !!!

Well, I guess I better wrap up this post, been a long one. Hopefully this time I can stick to my guns and actually achieve a goal I start out to get and be profitable getting it.

I guess only time will tell how it ends......

DeVotchKa - How it ends.

The Fish Bite Back

2011-01-21T11:42:00.002Z

Well the new year started off as the last year ended, I was cruising at my new 10NL challenge and after about 3k hands was a comfortable 7 buyins up. Then it seemed the dreaded doom switch turned. I am still bum hunting, but the next 6k hands, the fish hit everything....and I mean EVERYTHING !!!! Every flush chase came. Flopped sets got rivered by runner str8s or runner runner flushes. I even trapped one fooker with 66 on a 886 board only for the all the money to go in on the turn 7. Of course he flipped 78 !!!

But, I still have belief in my game at this level, may need to cut down on the continuation bets a bit and make better notes on the players, just cos they are playing 78/4 you still need to make a few extra notes on how they do things apart from the obvious "DO NOT BLUFF" !!!!

Managed to pull a couple of buyins back the last couple of days, but I am still about 7 buyins below EV at the mo, it sucks, but at least I know I am getting them in good most of the time.

I am not playing as much as I would of hoped, I think January tends to always be a strange month for me as I seem to set a few life goals and targets. I am trying to lose a bit of weight at the moment, so have been focusing on that bit, managed to lose about 6lb so far, which considering I have had at least two "all dayers" and a few takeways is not too bad, not really started excercising much yet, so hopefully there is more to come. Would love to get below 12st by the end of the year (currently 15st 2) so its a bit of a tall order, but I can but try.

Not played a tourney all year yet, I just can't seem to get in the mindset to sit down knowing that I could be there for a good 6-7 hours and still only double my entry fee, thats the beauty of cash really, just play and leave when you want.

So the bankroll challenge is still on, but getting up to £1500 to move up the levels seems a long way off at the moment and playing at 10NL the rakeback is not much either. I think I got about £13 for ~10k hands from last month !! will prob only do about 15k hands this month as well, so I do need to up the volume a bit to help boost the roll, although to be fair I would rather be winning at the tables.

Todays track is from a band I have only just heard of recently, but they seem pretty cool.

Pretty Reckless - Miss Nothing

Ironic December and Yearly Round up (sort of)

2011-01-01T11:51:00.003Z

Well would you adam and eve it. After setting myself a bankroll challenge and dropping down to 10NL€ I ended up having my best month on the cash tables in the whole year and I only played 10K hands !!! unbelievable. This was mainly down to only playing 4 tables and doing some serious bumhunting. I tag high VPIP fish as green and every time I sat at a table, within twenty hands or so, I could see at least one player that was gonna be tagged str8 away, it was just then a case of waiting for a hand then taking their $$$ Sweeeeeeet....Long may it continue.

I finished december about 18 buyins up in the 10k hands and after conversion was approx $250 up, which as I said above, not taking into account tourney winnings, was my biggest month profit on the cash tables.

It helped bring a very bad year to an end and I finished the year about $950 total profit, which is my worst year ever.

2010 was probably the worst year of life overall. It all started off what I thought was going to be the best with a dream fulfilled in our tour across Canada in April, which was one of the best two weeks in my whole life. Unfortunately it all went downhill from there. The summer saw the loss of my Grandmother and my precious pooch Fern. November also took the life of my wifes Grandmother and then to cap it all, after surviving and recovering from two bowell cancer operations my Uncle Jimmy had a stroke which proved fatal and he also tragically passed away. Needless to say I did not celebrate new years eve at all last night, I had one large glass of JD and said good riddance to 2010.

So, enough of the past, onwards to the future. I am keeping to my current goals and staying on microgaming for my bankroll challenge. I have managed to get my account up to £600 playing 10NL and i am ignoring my bankroll that I have in my savings account of £1300 (I may use this as a seperate tourney roll, not sure yet). Therefore my bankroll challenge is only what is in my online account. I intend to carry out the following management plan.

Level....Buyin...Min Roll
€10NL....€10.....£500
€20NL....€20.....£1500
€40NL....€40.....£3000
€50NL....€50.....£5000
€100NL...€100....£10000

As you can see, the amount of buyins increases as I move up to give more room to play and also the roll is in £, where as most of the play is on € tables, so this gives a bit more protection as well.

If all goes well, I plan to withdraw £200 at £2k, £300 at £3k, £400 at £4k, £500 at £5k. Once I get to £6k I plan to withdraw anything above that amount in the account on the last day of the month.

It is going to be a long slow process, but I am hoping to spend more time studying this year and trying to concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

Ideally by the end of the year I want to be playing about 50k hands a month at €50NL and running at 1BB/100 minimum. (running at 9.27BB/100 at 10NL at the mo lol)

So heres wishing you all a Happy and Healthy new year and hope you all live life in the fast lane.....

New Order - 60 Miles an Hour

Not playing much

2010-11-29T12:11:00.003Z

Hardly playing much at the moment, mainly due to the fact I have just picked up a couple of rescue dogs who seem to be taking up all of my time. We lost our precious staffie Fern earlier in the year and had not planned at looking for another pooch until early next year, however a friend of ours happen to mention a rescue centre in hereford that had a couple of staffies that have always been together, but due to lack of interest from anyone in taking them both on, they were about to be split up. We just felt heartbroken that this would happen so we arranged to go and see them on a Sunday afternoon about 3 weeks ago. After taking them for a short walk, we absolutely fell in love with them and ended up bringing them home with us. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to have a dog, or in this case two dogs !!!! So our little family is complete again with the new arrivals being Red an 8 year old pure bred staffie who is a proper little gentlemen and also Crywdro a 5 year old cross staffie who is as barmy as a bog brush. I have not smiled as much for months as I do when I am with them. I am even getting up at 6am every morning with the wife to take them for a walk, which is abs unheard of, I think I had forgotten that there were two 6 oclocks in the day !!!

Obviously looking after the mutts I have not had time to play much poker and also the bad news is that I think I might of missed the boat with my rakeback deal on my new site, still waiting to see what my % is going to be, but it looks like with all of the changes on the MG network that I won't be getting what I was hoping for, so will probably be moving sites again. I have played about 9k hands this month and I about 2 buyins up, I have managed to find quite a few fish at the 10NL 6 max tables, so I am still sticking to my challenge to build a roll from scratch, although if I need to move sites, I might start at 20NL as the money coming in at this level is not much at all. But at least it looks like I will be having a profitable month at the tables without rakeback for the first time in a while.

I plan to play some MTTs in December in the vein hope that I can bink a decent score to get my yearly profits back up to something a bit more acceptable cos at the moment its going to be my worst year profit wise that I have ever had and I have played over 300k cash hands !!!!

Looking forward to xmas, going to have a quiet one with the family and the dogs, lots of food and beer, with plenty of planning and goal setting for the new year.

Been listening to this band for the last week, even bought their latest album, def worth a listen.

Editors - Papillon

Starting from Scratch

2010-10-28T12:41:00.002+01:00

Well its back to the drawing board and back to basics. I have made my decision on what I want to do for the foreseeable future and I have decided to give Full Ring on Stars the elbow and go back to playing 6 max on another site with a decent rakeback deal.

I have also decided to go back to the beginning and concentrate on my play more than the volume, for this reason alone, I am going to go back to playing 10NL 6 Max and set myself a challenge of building a whole new bankroll from an initial £300 deposit into my new site. As I will be playing in Euros its not really that much of a drop, but I am going to be very disciplined in my approach to both my play and my bankroll management. I am going to stick to a strict 100 Buyin Rule for moving up to the next level with the added fact that I also have to have played a minimum of 50K hands at that level and be running at least 1BB/100 winrate. Regardless of the bankroll, if I can't beat the level I am playing at I can't move up....simples.

In preparation for this I have actually been playing some 20NL€ 6 max on ladbrokes for a while (had a bit of spare cash on there) I have only played about 1k hands and have been playing ok with some good results running at +10BB/100 but as its such a small sample Its not really a good view of the long term, but I suppose its better than being -10bb/100. My new site isn't Laddies, but its on the Microgaming Network, lets just hope with all of the changes that they are making that my rakeback deal will still be valid, If not I guess it will be all change again lol

The timing is quite good really as my shower blew up the other day with smoke steaming out of it, we are really lucky we were at home when it happened as if we were at work there was a good chance it could of caught fire and burn the whole house down !! We have been thinking about replacing and redecorating the bathroom for quite a while so it seems like the ideal time to sort the lot out. As I am dropping down in stakes and set myself a bankroll challenge I have also decided to take £1000 out of my poker bankroll to put towards paying for the bathroom, it will help keep the wife quiet for a bit if she can see some winnings from my spoils going towards she actually wanted for a change ;-))

This will leave about £1700 in my poker bankroll, so even though I am starting off with only £300 on my new challenge, I will keep the remaing money that is not left in Stars/Laddies in a seperate savings account. I always feel that it is best to keep my poker roll in a totally seperate account, that way its always there if you need it.

One good thing about making a change in what your are going to play is the fact that you get a new surge of enthusiasm and excitement, this is fuelled by setting detailed goals and bankroll plans, lets hope the bad beats hold off long enough to keep the hope going. The other good thing about not relying on volume to get bonuses and keep VIP levels is the fact I can play when I want to play and when I am focused. I think too much of my play on stars has been mass tabling while not in the mood just to get the volume in and my results have plummeted because of this.

Lets hope by my next post I can pull back some of the years losses on the cash tables and maybe even have a profitable month in November without counting the rakeback, which is something I have not done since about April I think !!!

Off to see these bad boys on Thursday night along with Avenge Sevenfold

Stone Sour - Through Glass

What to Do ?

2010-10-11T15:52:00.002+01:00

Well, I am really in a dilemma as what to do with poker at the moment. I am not sure whether to stay with cash, give STTs a real go or mix cash with MTTs. The cash side as you know is not going very well at the moment, this month started off where last month left off and I had a bad first couple of sessions, I have pulled some back, but still not where I want to be. STTs seems like an option, but I played that 25 x $5 challenge recently (cough, which I won by the way) :-) and although I ran and played ok, I really had fogotten how boring the games were. Likewise with MTTs I have played a couple in the last few days and although I managed to make the final table in one of them, in the other I was going ok then after a couple of hours, I 4 bet all in with AA only to get chimped by the big chippie at the table with his pocket sixes, pretty standard stuff, but serious monkey tilting none the less.

I have done back to try some 6 max on microgaming and really tried to change my nitty style, so far going reasonable, my play stats are 100% better than they used to be, I guess as I am only playing it €20NL the money don't matter so I can concentrate on playing well and not worrying about any major losses. Although I have had a couple of hands where I have got busted on which made me remember why I left microgaming in the first place !!! Still, I will keep this going in the background I think and see what happens. If I do decide to stay on MG, I may even join one of the other sites just to take advantage of the deposit bonuses, I have only really played on laddies on MG for quite a while now, as my other old Prima accounts all jumped ship onto other platforms.

I have looking where to play MTTs, mainly looking for reasonble fields of up to 500 max, pref 5-10 buyins of any currency really, the selection on laddies is pretty poor at the moment, they are due a big reshuffle in the new year, so hopefully this will improve. A few people have mentioned about ongame being good value, so might give that a go, I think Betfair have just moved to there, so def might give them a look in.

One good piece of news on stars is that they seem to have dumped the clearence vpps to get the bonuses, so when you cash in a bonus, you no longer have to play a shed load of hands to get the $$, the bad news is that they did this a few days after I bought a 25k FPP $300 bonus lol, so I still got to clear that, so I am tied to stars for a bit longer. I only need about 600vpps now, so hopefully I can still cash that in without losing more than the $300 that I will get back. I will still have about 17k fpps after that clears, so might just buy some of the $50 bonuses, not sure yet, just would be nice to see my profit back up over the year, as its not looking too clever at the moment.

So there is a real decision to be made over the next few weeks, I am going to give myself up to the start of december to decide. Mainly because if I do stay on stars, I would want to start next year off as Platinum to give myself a good shot at getting some solid bonuses. For now, I am just going to try and play a bit of everything but try and spend most of my time studying the vids/forums. I think in and ideal world mass tabling full ring would be my thing, but with the leaks I have got at the moment, this is like burning money and I next year I don't want to be in the same situation where I am this, ie 100s of hours played for peanuts returns. If I am going to put the same amount of hours in next year that I have this year, I want $10k back as a minimum. We can but hope.

One of my fave bands, with one of my fave songs.....

New Order - Crystal

Game Over

2010-09-26T22:14:00.003+01:00

Well, despite all the support I have had from my poker buddies, the Supernova dream for this year is over. I started off the month with the intention of really giving it some hammer and put in two long grinding sessions, both of which I got battered dropping nearly 10 buyins. My confidence went out the window and along with it the willingness to put the hours in that was gonna be required.

To be honest, its a bit of a relief. I can now come home from work and do what the fck I like rather than quickly get some dinner down me neck then get on the PC.

I have played a bit since the first few days, but not that much, mainly chasing the 50 Billion Hand Promo, I dropped down to 9 tables and prob broke about even over the month not including the first few days. As for the promo, I never got a sniff, but that jammy fooker Dirk managed to hit one of the milestone hands and got paid off $1k, pleased for him of course, but why the fook could it not be me loooool.

So the plan for the next two months is to fix what the previous 6 months have broken, mainly my game which has gone to complete pot. It will also give me a chance to sort my health out, which also has taken a nosedive. so plenty of study on the tables, back to 4 tabling at the very most. Also mix in some 6 max sessions, mainly because after dropping from 13-15 tables back to 4 I know I am gonna bored as fook.

I have still managed to get to Gold Status this month and will probably try to keep this going in October and November while I decide what I really want to do for next year. If I can fix my game back to a winning one by December, I might up the volume so I can start off 2001 as Platinum. I will only bother doing this if I decide to try and go for Supernova next year. I think I can achieve it easily over the whole year, starting it later like this year gave the added pressure of having to play when I really didn't want to.

As stated above, I can also try and concentrate on my health. I am currently 15 Stone 7. I want to get below 14st by the beginning of December, then hopefully keep to that weight over xmas during the party period ready for a fresh start next year with my ultimate weight goal to be around the 11st 0 mark. A tall order I know, but if I can acheive the first goal, I am sure it will give me the confidence to carry on and when your confident it carries over to all areas of your life, which hopefully, will bring a new era of positivity (is that even a word lol !!)

As I don't need as big a poker roll anymore, I decided to take out £1000 to pay for some bits and bobs that I needed. I intend to put some of it back over the remainder of the year, but prob only a few hundred punds. So should be starting off the new year with a bankroll of about $4000. Although if I do decide to go for supernova next year, I might be willing to invest about $1000 of that in some decent coaching over the first few months so I don't spew $$ like I have been doing at the tables lately.

So its a big apology to all the 50NL full ring regs on stars, who no doubt have me on there buddy lists ;-) I won't be at the tables no where near as much till next year.

So I guess my life will be a bit quieter for a bit......

Dubstar - Not so Manic Now.

Should I throw in the towel ??

2010-08-27T17:54:00.003+01:00

Well, I have had a week off work and planned to play tons of hands in my bid for supernova, however it just hasn't happened. The week has turned out having a few more drinking sessions than I originally planned, which although was great fun, was not good for the grind or the bankroll. I started off the week with the best intentions, getting a 5k hand day in for the first time, but I didn't play well and it affected my confidence quite a bit, I think after that I was looking for excuses not to play just in case I played or ran bad again.

I reckon I might only pull in about 8k vpps this month, which will put me on around 42k for the year in total, with 4 months to go this would mean I would need to get 58k vpps at an average of approx 14.5k vpps a month to get it. Considering the most I have ever gotten is about 8k, that would obv mean playing a lot more than I am now.

So sometime in September I am going to have to make a decision what to do. If i don't carry on and get to supernova, all my plans for next year will have to change, if this is the case, I might as well try something else for the remainder of the year as at the moment as it stands the year is going to be a complete washout and almost certainly the lowest yearly profit since I have been playing poker, which considering it is by far the most I have ever played, is pretty piss poor.

I still think my health and fitness is causing me issues as my concentration level is appalling, even when I am 15 tabling, I still tend to drift off and mooch around on the net. I know for a fact that the days when I can keep my mind on the game, my decisions are much better (not always the results, variance is a beeetch)

If I do knock the supenova bid on the head, I think i will spend more time on my fitness, I have been trying to lose a few pounds, well stones to be fair, for quite a while. I have posted before many times how if you feel better about yourself, your confidence level increases and if your confidence increases, so does your profit at the tables, so I think this is a must starting in September.

But for now, it was my buffday on Wednesday, so tonight is yet another night out on the piss, which will inevitably end up with 9 tabling drunk later on, I know I shouldn't but sometimes I can hold it together and play ok, other times the drunken risks pay off !!! but mostly, I play like a twat and lose a buyin or two lol......c'est la vie.

Todays song is from a little known band called 22 pisterpirkko I came across them by accident when at a festival in the 90s, it started pissing down and I dived in the nearest tent and this band happened to be playing and they were amazing live.

22 pisterpirkko - This Time

Struggling for time

2010-08-20T13:33:00.003+01:00

Been a busy old month, unfortunately busy, as in, out on the piss a lot !!! So obv, the poker hours I planned to put in have suffered. I have only played about 22k hands so far this month and I am slightly down at the tables. This is mainly due to one drunken tilty session where, to be honest, I just did not care about the money at all and just piled in with uber aggression. Of course when you are pissed your reads and timing are, well to be blunt, fooking miles off !! With the big drop in profits that comes with it. This along with an AA vs KK all in pre for 110 bb where the board finished 8, 9, 10, J, Q !!! Did not help either.

I have got an all day wedding tomorrow as well, then sunday the mighty Villa are on telly at 13.30, with Man U the next game on at 16:00, which means another all day super cider sunday....Just hope I can keep off the tables when I get home.

The good news is that I am off work all of next week, so should be able to catch up on the old hours.

I decided to cash in 50k fpps for a $650 bonus which I should be completing early next week, so hopefully the doom switch won't get turned on and lose the lot getting the bonus, which I have heard a few people say its rigged to do *tuts at conspiracy theorists.

I have also accepted an STT challenge from BurnleyMik on the krackedkings forum. Only a $20 wager over who can post the most profit over 25 $5 stts on stars. I haven't played stts for yonks, they used to be my bread an butter back in the day, but I got bored, although at times when playing bad at cash I have thought about going back to them, especially now that I am used to mass tabling a bit more, I only used to play two at a time when I did them a while ago, I feel I could comfortably 18 table them, hopefully not getting heads up in all 18 at once !! Will be starting them next week, Mik has already done 10 and got 4 3rds and 2 2nds, so might have me work cut out.

Will be having a night in tonight (well thats the plan, until Winona calls !!) so hopefully can get a couple of thousand hands in and catch the friday drunken fish on later, although that could end up being me !! Got to die me hair tonight at some stage, so having a shed load of beer prob not be a good idea, otherwise I might end up looking like a morris dancer !!

Thats it for now, feeling pretty good at mo, mainly cos I know I got a weekend on the piss and partying coming up and a week off work straight after. So as we are in a happy mood......

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Happy House

Whores Draws

2010-08-01T11:58:00.004+01:00

The title exactly shows what my July was like and as you can see in the graph, up until the last two sessions of the month it was looking quite rosy, but as we all know, a good kick in the balls is only a few hands away.

To be fair, I actually ran quite well, which is even more annoying cos I would of expected to of won a lot more considering how +ev I was, but I guess we can't have anything.

The main downside of the month poker wise was the amount hands I played. I was determined to get over 12k VPPS but personal circumstances dictated otherwise, I did manage to get over 7.5k though so at least I have got back to platinum level, but I still am now only on about 31k VPP, so to get to 100K by the end of the year to get to supernova is starting to feel like a tall order. As stated in my previous post, I have got some leave in August so want to try and get a lot of play in. I feel realistically I need to be over 50K VPP by the end of August to stick a chance, but this would involve probably moving up to 18 tables from the 13-15 I am currently doing. I am already find it difficult to post any sort of decent profit mass tabling as it is. Maybe I should have at least two days a week where I drop to 4-6 and play proper poker instead of just mindlessly play nitty abc poker to get the volume of hands in. If i am going well, its def any idea to be looked at.

On a personal note July was a truly awful month for me. There are only 4 things I truly love in this world namely my wife, my mother, my grandmother and my dog. July incredibly took two of these away from me. My Grandmother sadly passed away at the grand old age of 84 and the funeral took place at the beginning of July. Then when things looked like they couldn't get any worse by beautiful staffie Fern went off her legs at the age of 13 and we had to make the awful decision to have her put to sleep. Now I have had a couple of dogs before who have passed away, but this was the first time I have been in the vets when we have had to do it and it is truly the most heartbreaking thing I have ever had to do, I am even shedding a tear while writing this just even thinking about it. She was one of the most precious little things you could ever meet and the house now seems completely soul less without her running around causing mayhem. We will eventually get another staffie, almost certainly from a rescue centre again, but it won't be for a while as the pain of losing Fern is still to hard at the moment.

Any, enough of cheering you all up, this is supposed to be a poker blog !! So at least you can see the reasons why I didn't hit my goal of 12k VPP.

Gonna go out for a walk today around a local park then have some dinner then start back on the grind. Still not sure what to do about the FPPs. I have about 62k of um at the moment, so could cash 50k in for $650 and then do the same again in September. Would def help the roll I suppose, but tempted to keep them for the $4k 250k fpps if I get to Supernova. I don't need to cash them in just yet as my roll is quite healthy, so will prob leave them for now. If any of you our there that read this are stars players, let me know what you do with them and the best value ?

Thats it for now, hopefully it won't be a month before my next post, should be able to slip in a few updates in between the grind, if I haven't gone completely insane.

Something softer today to calm the mood.

Bauhaus - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

A Tough Month

2010-06-30T23:39:00.003+01:00

Well the ship didn't stay steady for long, in fact the day after my last post, I put in a 3000+ hand session and managed to donk off almost 8 buyins, I should know better than to mention how things are turning around for the better, cos inevitably it goes tits up almost straight away.

The month didn't turn out a total disaster, approx 40k hands played and only $15 down, with some fpps in the bank to cash in at a later date, so technically was in profit, but could of been so much better, I still reckon I tilted off at least 4 buyins and lost another 4 buyins with stupid calls, its the same old story.

One bad thing about the month was that due to the world cup, I didn't play no where near as much as I should of as I was out on the piss, or watching games at home so I didn't manage to maintain platinum, so have dropped back to gold. I really need to get at least 12k vpp next month, or I will have no change of getting to supernova by the end of the year. If I can get approx 12k in July, I have got some holiday booked in August and intend to have a full week of 8 hours at least a day to try and get some serious grind in, I really need to get at least 20k vpp that month to get me back on track, I may be able to do the same again in october.

As long as I don't hit a big downswing and start monkey tilting again, I should be ok.

Lets hope July can be the first profitable month at the tables in the last 3.

GL me and bring on the grind.

The Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

Steadying the ship

2010-06-06T21:41:00.002+01:00

The complete and utter disaster that was called "May" is over. I hope I never have another month like it. I really had to step back and evaluate my game completely. In doing so, I believe I managed to identify a few major leaks and worked on them. I still have many more leaks to look at but I think at least I have stemmed the downward spiral that I thought I was never going to be able to get out of. I am not saying I have turned it around completely yet, but I now, for the short term at least seem to be heading in the right direction.

I finished May 19 buyins down, but at one stage was over 25 buyins, so the re-evaluation of my game has paid off already. I only managed to get 50K hands in at the end, mainly due to the fact that I was running/playing so bad, I ended up cutting down the amount I played. I guess this is only natural, although I it did cross my mind to start chasing my losses, but this is just a recipe to disaster.

The one good thing that did come out of May was that I did actually make platinum, but only on the last day and if I am going to hit Supernova by the end of the year, I now know it is going to take 100k hands per month from now on in, or something close to that figure, I really don't want to end up in a situation where I need to get about 25k vpp in December and end up doing stupid mass tabling sessions for long hours, although to be fair, this may even be good practice for 2011 when that is exactly what I will be doing.

If I can sustain my play at the moment and keep on the winning track, I might even invest in some coaching in September, I have a couple of people in mind from Cardrunners who I think will be able to improve my game.

So, lets just hope the ship has stopped sinking for now and we can stay afloat and have a profitable month without rakeback for a change and you never know, in two months time, I might even get a comeback king icon on PTR ;-)

Madness - Night Boat to Cairo

June has started off a little better, continuing on the winning streak, only about 4 buyins up at the moment in about 14k hands.

Nightmare on every street

2010-05-15T13:07:00.002+01:00

Well the wheels have really fell off the wagon, its been a really bad 10 days or so. In this short space of time, I have virtually lost my whole years profit. I have tried to put my finger on what the problem is and have come to the conclusion that it is just variance, I have had a few inevitable bad beats, but most of the big pots I have lost have just been coolers with at least 6 sets losing to oversets. I am about 16 buyins down this month in the 33k hands that I have played so far, which is very bad considering my quite nittish style at full ring.

I am considering changing the style of play that I use and I am definitely going to have to experiment with different lines as the style of play on stars does seem to be a lot different to what I am used to on other sites. When I was sponsored with Bad Beat on ipoker. In the first 3 months I was up over 1k playing only two tables of 50NL Full Ring and was obv playing a lot less hands than I am now as I am currently 9-13 tabling normally a min of 3-5 hours a day. So I must be doing something drastically wrong.

The other thing I may need to consider is the the variance seemed to have kicked in since Stars changed the min buyin structure so the 20bb guys can't now sit at the 40bb-100bb tables that I am choosing to play on. I am beginning to wonder if a lot of my profit when I first started to play on stars was from playing against these short stacks in a +ev fashion. I am not sure how I could filter this out in HEM to see if this indeed the case, although I really don't want to go an play at the 20bb-50bb tables as I have read a few studies that the short stackers do have a real advantage long term.

The good news I guess is that I have already retained Gold Star status and should move up to platinum by the end of next week. Should also be able to purchase a $650 VIP Bonus at the end of the month, which should bring some welcome $$ back into the bankroll which as I said above is taking a bit of a hit at the moment.

I reckon its gonna be a long struggle to get to supernova and I need to develop an effective strategy to at least break even very quick, or it will be back to MTTs and Snooze and Gos again.

Prob won't play too much today as its FA Cup final day here in Englands green and pleasant land, which means a compulsory all day out on the piss.

Also need to start to increase the frequency of my blogging to help with my enthusiasm through these bad times. Hopefully the good times will be back again very soon.

Time to get the blood rushing round the body ready for the day out, crank up the sound to full and give it some thrash.....

Pendulum - Watercolour

Back and ready to grind

2010-05-03T23:01:00.004+01:00

Hello Peeps....

Back from a tour of my new fave place in the world, namely Canada. Was out there on a West to East fully guided tour, which included a 3000 mile train journey from Vancouver through the Rockies, stopping eventually in Toronto. the tour also included stop offs in Jasper, Ottawa and a short period in Montreal. Without a shadow of a doubt, it was the most wonderful holiday I have ever experienced.

As we were going in mid April, we spent a fortune on Winter clothes, ready for the cold onslaught that was about to be thrust upon us, which of course, never came. The weather was outstanding, with only 3 hours of rain during the whole time we were over there and that was when were on the train, so no coats were needed.

Its really difficult to pick out what I loved most, we just did so much while we were out there. I guess if I had to choose one thing that stood out, it would possibly be the helicopter ride of Niagara Falls. All of my life I have said that if I was gonna die tomorrow, the one thing I would have to do before I popped it would be to see the falls in the flesh. When the opportunity to fly over it in a helicopter came up, it just had to be done. I took so many photos while up there, but I think this is one of the best ones that came out ok.

I could talk forever about the holiday, but as this is a poker blog, I know you will only get bored. I do however intend to return to Canada again in the near future, hopefully to tour move of the West coast in the next 3 years or so.

The bad thing about holidays is that they eventually end and you have to go back to work. This strangely enough was short lived for me, as after two days back at work I got the dreaded Man Flu and had to come home sick. I always get really fooked off when I have to have time off sick as I do like to take the piss out of the girly puffs who have a sniffle and don't turn up. I don't tend to get ill very often (touch wood) but when I do, I seem to get it bad. Luckily it only lasted for about 4 days, so I now feel ok again and have been back on the poker tables.

I did manage to play enough hands in April to retain my Gold status on stars. But as May has now started, the grind is now on to get to SuperNova by the end of the year.

I currently have about 12k VPPS and seem to be holding my own 9 tabling, but due to stupid and I mean STUPID calls I am not winning very much at the tables. I have got to the stage where I have played a lot of hands and my hand reading skils have improved immensely. However, what hasn't improved is my abilty to put my reads into practice. There still seems to be a little man on my shoulder saying "Call you fool, he hasn't got it" even when if you follow the hand through to its logical conclusion, it is bleeding obvious that he has it and the fold is the only option.

Still, I am in profit with the bonuses and building up some nice FPPs ready to cash in later in the year. As stated, this year is all about getting used to mass mulitabling on stars and hopefully developing a strategy that at worst is break even, but hopefully bring in at least 0.5bb/100 which is my aim considering the amount of tables that I will be playing.

On target to hit platinum this month, so as the title says, Let the grind begin.

New Order - Perfect Kiss

March Round Up

2010-03-31T22:50:00.004+01:00

The best month by far this year, finishing approx $880 up, which has helped put my year back on track. It was fairly rock on the cash fron, but managed to finish approx 3 buyins up and played by far the most hands in a month I have done, I estimate I played approx 42k hands, not the greatest win rate by far I know, but at least it was a winning month over a significant amount of hands. Didn't reach Platinum on stars in the end due to a few nights out on the piss over the last week or so.

I have one day left at work tomorow, then I am off work for 25 days, yep, TWENTY FIVE FOOKING GLORIUS DAYS.........YEE HAAAA. Have got a great trip touring across Canada planned for the wifeys 40th and just can't wait, I have always wanted to go there so at last will be fulfilling one of my lifetime ambitions, which I feel I haven't done to many of lately, def time to get a wish list going and start crossing them before I start getting toooooo old.

Anyway, back to the poker. Last months profit mainly came from a decent tourney finished (see below) Dunno why, but last Friday, I just fancied playing a decent MTT, so went for the $30 Deep Stack on Lucky Ace Poker (on the 888/Pacific Network) I actually spent the first 4 hours of it playing it on the my 2nd monitor while 9 tabling cash on stars, did nothing special, just played solid. To be fair, the tourney sort of played itself as most of my big hands held and I got paid off to boot. No real special hands, no beats to shout out about, I didn't get lucky, just a plain ole boring mtt which just happened to go on for 7 hours. I eventually went out 6th when I was the short stack, I decided to call a min utg raise on my bb with QJ with the intention to shove any non dangerous flop. I think the flop came down 24 8 or summat like that, so I shoved, I was quite stunned when he snap called with his mighty AT for a 1/4 of his stack, a good call I know, but not a single thought went into it, but hey how, $637 for 6th has helped me no end and I have a little tourney roll on LAP to play with now.

Won't be able to play for about 16 days in April, so the plan will be to just keep Gold Status on Stars ready for the big push in May where I hope to play 100k hands in a month for the first time, although a back log of work may get in the way, but will give it a go.

Lets hope the rest of the months of the year can yield a similar amount of profit.

I guess we should have a Canadian Theme for todays song, thought about Monty Pythons I'm a lumberjack, but settled for this.

Alannis Morisette - Ironic.

Ready to Rock

2010-03-21T12:52:00.002Z

My Pc was starting to really piss me off, so I took the plunge and rebuilt it from scratch. Installed windows 7 and then put all me poker software back on. Took the drastic decision to start off a whole new database from scratch and not import any of my old hands. I guess its a nice clean start all round. All back up and running, decided to buy table Ninja as I am def gonna stay on stars for my little supernova challenge.

I have upped to 9 tables and will probably stick at this until May, possibly go to 12 in April depending on how it goes.

I have reached Gold status as expected quite easily and possibly may even get to Platinum by the end of the month depending on what I get up to next weekend.

Things have been going ok at the tables for a change and I am a few buyins up, although I have been running quite a bit above ev to be fair, but I ain't gonna complain whend I do. Not sure exactly how many hands I have played this month as I have started a new database, but have managed to clock up 18k hands in the last 9 days, so I am pretty sure that this month will be the most I have ever played. This is gonna be nothing compared to the 100k hands+ a month I will need to be doing shortly, not sure how much I am looking forward to it, but gonna give it a good bash.

So the suns out, just come back from a lovely walk in the park with my wife, i'm winning at poker and I am about to go down the pub to watch the footy and sink a few winonas with me mates. Its what life was meant for.

Rock on...............

The Cardigans - My Favourite Game

Shoot for the stars

2010-03-08T23:17:00.002Z

Been playing on Stars almost exclusively at 50NL Full Ring, only 6 tabling just to get a feel for the site and also only playing when I feel like playing. I don't know why, but there is def something about Stars that makes me tilt less, I am sure I will prob regret that statement later on the year.

Only played about 6k hands this month, but I am over 3 buyins up, so can't complain had a couple of beats too, but overall, nowt to send me on a spunk monkey tilt fest.

In preparation for upping the amount of tables, I downloaded a trial of Table Ninja. It really is one impressive piece of software and I would not play without it any more on stars when multi-tabling, it is worth the $$ alone, just so the active table is under the mouse so you don't have to click twice, which was driving me fooking nuts !!!

The only pain in arse I have is that I can't upgrade to the latest version of HEM, due to an issue I have with .net framework on me Vista PC, its gonna take a rebuild to cure it and frankly I can't be arsed. If I am gonna rebuild it, I will prob go straight to windows 7, but its coming up to 3 years old anyway, do thinking about buying a new one, will prob leave this till I come back from me hols, will def save a lot of hassle being able to build the new one and get it all set up while still being able to use the old one.

Been having a mooch on pokertableratings as well, not sure what to think yet, I am not sure how accurate it is, as I have noticed it has already missed one of the days off when I was two buyins up, which over a sample less than 10k hands, makes a big diff to how you potentially would view a player, so might use it as a very rough guide, but prob not make any stacking off decisions based on the info on there.

Overall enjoying poker again, although this may be due to the fact that I am playing only when I want to at the moment. This will obv change in may when I have to start grinding out prob at least 500vpp a day to get to supernova by the end of the year. I will post my progress weekly on this little challenge from the beginning of May, but as of now, the plan is just to tick over, slowly transfer $$ over to build the roll up on stars ready for the big plunge next year. Made Silver Star this month and should easily get Gold. Hopefully keep Gold during April when I won't be able to play many days, will just have to make sure I get a fair few points in on the few days I can play.

I also think I may of misjudged my calcs for next year, on my last post initially I said my aim would be for SuperNova 500k, looking at the VPP/Hand I am getting at the moment, I think realistically this may have to drop to 300k target unless I can get some big sessions in at 100NL, I guess time will tell.

After seeing Rammstein the other week, it def got me thinking I don't go to enough gigs anymore, used to go to loads. Next on this list is the Foo Fighters, I saw them at the Reading Festival in about 1996, even crowd surfed to them (was a bit lighter in those days !!)

Wish my hair would fooking stay like his instead of looking like some ink dipped hippy !!!

Foo Fighters - Best of of you (Live)

Been Thinking

2010-02-21T21:45:00.002Z

Brain hurts cos of it. But at last I have come to a decision on what I want to do with poker..........

First of all, nothing is gonna start in anger till May 1st. I am going to spend the next two months sorting out my health and fitness in preparation for what I want to do in the future. Everything I do is now geared around planning for next year.

In short, I have decided to give Stars a real bash, beginning with getting to SuperNova by the end of the year. Gonna build up some VPPs over the next two months, just so I can start May prob at Gold, Get Platinum in May and then go for SuperNova by the end of the year.

I have done some calcs ready for next year and I really believe SuperNova Elite will be beyond me, even if I play 100NL, working full time as well, will just be a bit too much. So my aim for 2011 will be to hit 500,000 VPP, then review from there.

Obviously all of the above depends on my state of mind, as it from what I have seen it can be truly soul destroying when you hit a bad run of variance, and when you are playing that many hands a week, it is gonna hit hard. I def have the bankroll to do it and I have already started moving the funds around, I expect I may even make a loss this year if I don't do anything else, but if I don't cash in any of my FPP's it could be a good year next year if I can stay close to breaking even. Of course the plan is to win at the table as well, but this will be a bonus as no one can play there A game when 20+ tabling.

All may change in the future, but for now this is my plan.

Still well up on the month, found I have lost my patience for MTTs so started to drift back to cash again, lets hope the gods can let my hands hold up for a bit, cos I know then I can crush the levels I play........cough.

Went to see the greatest live band on the planet a couple of weeks ago at the LG arena, 3rd time I have seen them and they were better than ever. If you ever get a change to go and see them, you just have to check them out.

Rammstein.

Short trailer from set

No real decent live footage that has good sound on, so here is just one of there many cool vids.

Part Time Poker

2010-02-16T00:24:00.002Z

Not played much since my last post, played a fair few MTT's with limited success. Made a few $$ on the Laddies Weekly 2010 Leaderboard race, could of done a lot better in it, but picked a bad week. I was actually leading it by over 100 points after 2 days, but had already got tickets to see Rammstein on the weds night, co couldn't play. Thursdays as you all know is my piss up night (not missing that) but missing two whole days out of the the whole week, was never gonna be good. Also picked up about $280 rakeback from last months play on VC, so overall about $400 up this month, so back in profit for the year....JUST !!!

I have decided I am not going to play much poker at all now until May when I return from my hols. I need to concentrate on my fitness levels and to get my weight down, I really have let meself go lately, I think I need to set some goals to get meself back on track.

On the subject of goals, my enthusiasm does seem to have wained a bit for poker, but my desire to get some serious wonga out the game is still there. Again I think I need to set myself some challenges to keep my interest up. I have seriously been thinking about going for Supernova on stars from May -> December. That would give me approx 8 months to get 100k VPP, I think that this could be pretty achievable and would definitely give me some focus as it would require some proper planning and discipline time wise to get there. I would probably look to do this at 50NL Full Ring, if anyone has any experience of this sort of grind, please feel free to leave some comments or drop me an email.

If all goes well and my game improves to cope with the massive swings the above will take, then I may even consider giving SuperNova Elite a bash, I know I would have to play a minimum of 100NL to get there as it is gonna need an average of 2740 VPP a day, which is some serious grind. I'm really not sure I could dedicate myself for a whole year to get there, but if you could do it and break even at the tables, it could pay a serious wedge of your mortgage, which is something, to me, would make it all worthwhile. Although the wife would prob have a hissy fit at me playing poker for 6-7 hours everyday !!!

But at least it gives me food for thought on where to head.........

Joan Osborne - One of us

All Change

2010-02-02T11:42:00.003Z

Jan the 1st came and the plans for the year were all laid out. Bankroll aims, table selection, amounts to withdraw on a regular basis etc etc etc......

Jan the 26th and the toys truly went out the pram, a few mad tilt sessions and I had had enough of playing cash. If you are 15 tabling and you start tilting, it can be very expensive very quick.

I ended up withdrawing all of my money out of all sites, except for £200 in laddies and about $75 on stars. I also decided to take out about £1800 out of my bankroll to pay for the spending for the up coming Canada trip in April and pay of the odd other bits of stuff.

So its back basics, back to playing MTTs with maybe the odd 6 seater cash table when there is not much else about.

Yesterday was me first day back at the tables and went ok, played about 8 tournies and made 2 FT's coming 2nd in one and 4th in the other, although the 4th was in a Razz tourney with not that many runners. Also bubbled the FT on an omaha tourney, which was a bit frustrating as I got it all in with AAxx on the flop with the nut flush draw, the fish who called by all in with K6xx for the 2nd nut flush draw hit K and 6 on the turn/river for runner runner two pair, now that is foooking annoying, but c'est la vie. Hopefully tilt will be behind me soon (yes, I have said that before lol) but really gonna try not to let it get to me anymore.

Still not sure where to play me tournies yet, currently mainly playing on lads, but I know the pacific/littlewoods network has some good tournies on there, my m8 Ian took one down for a $12k payday in the last week or so, so they must be shite !!!

The one thing I did do after I had me little tanty snot rage was go back through all the hands etc and to be honest, I really didn't get shafted that much. I only ended 10 buyins down at the tables over about 27k hands, which is not the end of the world really and I have got a fair chunk or rakeback to come back which will cover most of that. I think the main reason for giving it a break is that I really don't want to go a whole year again being a slight losing player and making small change on rakeback, hence the reason to go back to MTTs. I will def be looking to sat into a few of the bigger tourneys and once I have got my roll back up again, start to look at buying in to €20 euro tourneys directly. I have left £3k in my poker savings account which is how I keep my bankroll seperate from my day to day money, and have about £300 online with about another £250 to come back in rakeback this month. Hopefully this will be enough to move forward.

Hopefully as they say on KrackedKings.....Big one coming !!!

New Order - Dreams Never End

Slow Start to the Year

2010-01-16T12:04:00.002Z

Hellooooooo, the year hasn't started off to great, the days I can be arsed to play I have managed to get a bit of a grind on, played about 14k hands so far this year, but running -ev at the mo, so I am about 2 buyins down, although I am happy with the majority of my play at the moment, so can't really complain.

Not played as many tournies as I would of liked, as I haven't really had the time to sit put aside 6 hours or so to go deep in anything decent, so no news on that really, gotta tidy the house up a bit today, getting a bit lazy on that front, then hopefully try and get 3k hands in over the day and maybe a couple of tournies on the evening.

Speaking of tournies, the Stars World Blogger thingy is up at the end of the month, I have cashed in this a couple of times, so looking forward to playing this again. I would love to play on stars full time, might have to see what it would take to make supernova elite playing 25/50c tables lol, if its possible, might have a bash next year, now that would be a challenge.

Option 1

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 141319

So the first tune of the year is has to be one of my fave artists of all time, he is the godfather of grunge and just probably one of the best live artists out there.

Neil Young - Cortez the Killer

Thats it for 2009

2009-12-31T13:44:00.003Z

Well, its the final post of 2009 and it was all set to be how bad a year its been at the tables and y worst year since 2005, however December turned all that around. Luckily a few good results on MTT's meant I finished the year $5328.03 in profit, $2600 of this being in December Alone.

I guess on reflection it was a poor year, I finished about 13 buyins down overall on the cash tables in a year where I really thought would be my first +ve. However I can look back over the year and those 13 buyins can be put down to a few sessions where I tilted badly, in fact I did have one day where I lost 13 buyins in one session alone. It just goes to show how over the long term a few bad sessions can really add up and turn you from a losing player to a winning player, every pot and decision really does count at cash, so if like me, you tend to be playing cash in the background while fucking around reading forums and playing Farmville, your $ per hour is really going to suffer. Hopefully this can be addressed in the new year.

I had another small tournament win on laddies, not a big win, but it did take over 5 hours and I believe I played very well and didn't make any mistakes during the whole tourney, sometimes this is more satisfying than winning big $$$, well almost lol.

Tried a few different things on the cash tables this month, even tried a couple of sessions shortstacking on 9 tables. I sat with $10 on $50 10 seater tables playing push poker and some blind stealing at the end of the session I had played 3000 hands and was $135 down looool. It was unreal, variance at its worst. Out of the 20 all in pots I got called on I only one 4 !!! losing 16 of them, worse of all I only got it in bad on about 3 of them, with most being an 80/20 fave getting called by lower pocket pairs which spiked there 2 outers.......So that idea got dropped quite quickly.

I finished the month going back to play 6 max and trying to play an optimum style, I managed to pull back all of the shortstacking losses doing this and finished off the month about a buy in up.

The original plan for next year was for volume, I have been practicing 9 tabling full ring on iPoker for a couple of days, sitting with $30 and seem to be doing ok, but it is still a problem with the shortstackers. Although, looking at the forums, there seems to be quite a few rumours that they will be changing the rakeback method from dealt the contributed, which will change a lot of peoples strategy I guess, but hopefully will make for better tables. The other big change on iPoker is winning players getting banned from playing. Victor Chandler, where I am playing the moment have blocked quite a few of the big winners from playing cash because of a new fine system being imposed by iPoker, which is a complete and utter farce. This even includes losing players who make money by rakeback alone, which in essence is me at the moment, so when I do start to win, it might be shortlived and I will have to start all over again on another skin if I want to play on iPoker, I guess I will see how it goes.

So the new plan is now a mix of volume and quality, alternating from multitabling full ring and playing 2-3 tables of 6 max. I also intend to play a lot more tourneys next year and also trying to sat into the bigger events, especially things like wcoop and ecoop etc. I can't go to vegas this year as where I work we are opening a new hospital in June and it will be chaos, we have even had a 2 week leave ban in the middle of the world cup ffs !!!! that could prove interesting when they try and drag me out the pub. lol

So, my goals for next year are basically to have my first winning year on the cash tables. Hopefully this will make the year my most profitable yet, $10k would be an ideal target overall, but that is what I said last year, but you never know.

Thats if for now, I hate new years eve, so will be staying in with the wife, but I love New Years Day, its like a big broom sweeping all the bad behind and everything ahead is positive. I intend to make it the best year of my life so far, lets hope it is yours too.

Goth

Joy Division - New Dawn Fades

A nice XMAS Bonus

2009-12-13T18:49:00.004Z

A bit over due, but as you can see by last months graph, I now consider myself a professional rakeback monkey, playing crappy break even poker. Starting the month off well, then just getting in to the old calling station rut, I don't know how many times I have mentioned this leak while blogging, but it is still there, I'm prob losing at least 4 buyins a month just not believing big value bets on the river and paying these people off., this month is almost exactly the same. I do however believe that if I fix this leak, I can be a good winning player at the level I am currently playing at, that along with the rakeback should make for a good year next year. So for the time being the crossroads is straight ahead and carrying on playing the cash tables, I will review this after the first couple of months of next year.

It was a tricky decision, as you see by laddies pic, I have also had my biggest win ever playing MTT's shipping €1500 when I took down the monthly Rake the Rake laddies 5k freeroll. I normally would of been running around the room like a chimp on acid, but I was feeling really ill, so when my AA stood up post flop all when heads up, I thought, oh a win, thats nice !!!!!

To be fair, I did get a bit lucky, as when we were down to the last 5, I shoved from the cut off on a steal while fairly short stacked with 10 7 os and got called by QQ, the flop was a total miss leaving almost drawing dead, then the miracle 7 on the turn and the 7 on the river kept me alive, I think once after that suckout my name was on it.

The win saved my year to be fair, taking my winnings to over $5k for the year, which I thought I had no chance of achieving, I guess it just shows that I still need to keep playing the odd MTT to keep my eye in and have a chance for the big wins to give the bankroll a boost.

Saying that, I have decided to take £1000 out of my bankroll to pay for xmas and also put some towards the canada holiday next year.

Hope to get at least one more blog in before xmas, so keep on muffing and gl at the tables.

The Ting Tings - Great DJ

A Dilemma

2009-11-21T14:24:00.002Z

Well, I think I have come to a crossroads in my poker life, after two years playing 90% cash, I am really starting to think if it really is for me. If I actually compare the profit from my early years which was all sng and mtt I think the figures tell there own story. Taking into account I played a lot less in those days and got NO rakeback and NO bonuses at all. At the moment, I am still a small loser on the cash tables overall, but making all my money in rakeback and bonuses.

So the dilemma is, do I go back to playing sngs and MTTs ? or to I still stick to cash and work hard on my game, so that when I do eventually become a winning player at the tables, this along with a good rakeback deal and 30k hands a month should then bring some decent $$$.

I have been looking hard at my figures to try and find out why I lose at the cash tables and it comes down to a plain and simple fact that I pay people off too lightly, I just don't believe them and I always thing they are "at it" and look them up light. I am also sad to say, I still tilt off a couple of buyins a month at least, this really does add up over the course of a year.

The month started off very well on my new site, but as you will see at the end of the month on my graph, the steep climb of profit for the first half of the month is far outwayed by the dramatic fall from grace as the decent is steeper coming down. I actually had another tit attack on friday morning and withdrew most of me money from the site, which I now regret, as it hasn't cleared and I only have 3 buyins left in there at the moment, so I can only play two tables max at the moment (which probably is a good thing)

Maybe only being able to play two cash tables, will give me the opportunity to play more MTTs as well. I have played a couple recently and done well, I should of made a decent score the other day when I was sitting 3/21 in the laddies 2.5k guarenteed out of 698 runners, I got dealt QQ and raised, 1 caller. Flop Q95 all clubs and he insta shoved, I called and he showed 55 and the lucky fish hit his 1 outer for quads on the river, was unreal, I wudda been a massive chippy at that stage as he was quite big stack as well, but eventually went out 15th....sigh. Also managed to make the FT of the 1111Poker Kracked Kings special, which I was really pleased with as there were a lot of good players to get through.

So, until the money clears back into my bank account, so I can then put it back into the poker site I took it out of, I guess its just gonna be 1 or 2 cash tables and mtts on laddies, so watch ya back on the tourney tables, Goth is back ;-))

Lush - Hypocrite

All Change

2009-11-07T02:26:00.002Z

Well the old saying goes "a change is good as a rest" So a change it is. Giving laddies and the 6 seaters a break for a bit and for my sins, I am going back to iPoker and also back to 10 seaters full ring.

So its a new site and a new nickname, keeping it stum at the moment, but its prob not that difficult to work out who is me if your trawel the 50NL tables, i'm very much a creature of habit !!!

Managed to get a good deal with an afiliate, hopefully it will work out, if not, I guess theres a lot of iPoker skins to have a pop at, but will stick with it for a couple of months at least just to see how the rakeback comes in.

Played a few hands at the end of last month on the new skin just so I can get my hud etc set up. Its been a while since I played full ring, especially on iPoker and I can't believe how many short stacking mother foookers there is, there abs everywhere, at least 5 on each table. The good news is that, as far as I can see, they are all shite lol. Just wait for the right time and value town them and never ever fold top pair post flop vs them.

So started in anger on 1st november and so far, touch wood, things are going ok, a couple of buyins up, just playing quite nitty and getting it in good where I can. One thing I had forgot about was you can't resize the tables and the mini ones are a bag of wank. Also the play is sooooo slow, after playing 6 seaters mainly for the last 18 months, it seems to take forever for the fish to think about folding there 72 off suit under the gun !!! I guess I might have to play 8 tables to counteract the hands per hour rate, been doing 4-6 for that first week, will up this if it continues to go ok.

Other good news, managed to get my first live cash at Broadway Casino in Brum on Friday in the £20 rebuy, was only 64 runners, but there was a 4.5k prizepool up for grabs. I did manage a couple of pieces of luck to get there. At 15 left I was down to 800 chips after the utg limped, I shoved with TT in mid pos and he insta called with his QJ !!! WTF !!! two hands later, there was a raise in early position. i shoved me 35 os in for value with me lat 800 chips. He turned over AK. I had a big smile when the flop came down 345, big sigh on the turn bought the 2 for his straight, then a big fook off grin when another 5 dropped on the river to boat me up looooool.

A few hands later, there was a couple of limpers and I shoved me AK, got called by one of the sneaky fookers with QQ. The flop came down 2QK and I was on me way to the bar but the poker gods were with me, with the turn coming an Ace and the monster K on the river to give me the bigger boat lool. Live poker is soooooo rigged.

After that, managed to get to final table, kept me head down while still short stacked watching them knock each other out. With 6 left I was guaranteed £220, with 5th paying £280, I only had 3 BB left and I did a deal for £300 with all of the others who were pretty even taking a bigger cut, but all playing for the remaining 1.6k. I was happy with that and eventually went out shoving with KJ and walking into AK right behind me. But overall very pleased and really enjoyed the banter. It def gave the confidence a bit of a boost.

So all is rosy again, apart from the fact that I can't seem to sleep at the moment, hence writing this at 2.45am (oh and homes5 was whinging I don't update it enough *blush)

So thats it for now, hopefully will get a shed load of hands in tomorrow, although if I pop down the pub at 14:00 to watch the rugby, it may get a bit messy as they normally turn into an all dayer....c'est la vie, its a hard life.......

Todays song is just a plain and simple happy song, seen the band live twice, always make me smile.

The Wannadies - You and Me Song

Dummy, Pram.....Out

2009-10-25T01:54:00.003+01:00

Right, thats it.

Had a great holiday, came back soooo relaxed was untrue. Played some pokes, played well and got back into the grind, has a few outdraws yesterday, but nay bother, I'm relaxed.....

Tonight, 5 buyins down, on such setup hands its untrue, set over set. full house, vs higher full house. In BB with Q3 sooooted, flop A65 all my suit giving me the flush, but the utg fish has limped with KT sooooooooooted to flooop the nut flush....FML

Ladbrokes can go kiss my arse I would of withdrawn all my money if I foooking could, everytime I try to withdraw or even transfer, it says I'm not logged in and gives me a login box, so I login, try again, noooo but i'm not logged in !!!! I'd phone them up, but I would end up smashing me fooking phone if I talked to any prick on the end of it !!!!

Time for another site..........................Can't believe my fave site to play on is the only site that I can't win on 6 max...........

Sigh !!!!!

So the irony of todays song, is that next week I am back at work and it will not be........

Happy Mondays - Kinky Afro

Late night update

2009-10-11T00:30:00.002+01:00

Not updated for a while, its seems my apathy for poker at the moment has crossed over into other areas of my life, just can't seem to get going with anything at the moment, plodding along halfheartedly. Def need a break from it all, luckily, got a holiday coming up soon and will be getting away from the rat race for 10 days or so, time to reflect on where I want to be with it all.

On the poker front, last month didn't turn out too bad in the end, I never did quite recover from the experiment at the start of the month, but pulled it back enough that after rakeback etc was almost $90 up on the month. Could of been a lot worse.

This month, I have stuck to me guns and only played a small amount of poker, only about 1.7k hands so far and I am a couple of buyins up. I am sure I will get back into the groove in the near future, hopefully put 20k+ hands in November and get ready for the push for 2010, where I def wanna get back to playing 50NL at least, with the aim of being able to play fully 100NL by the end of 2012

Not really much else to say, will be looking to remap me life out during the break, set new goals and lifestyle changes, using the time for positive thoughts, rather than the current negativity that I seem to be shrouded in at the moment. Also gonna look at changing my writing style, mix the blog up abit, seems to have gone a bit stale lately. Would love to get into a situation where I have the enthusiasm to be able to update it 2-3 times a week, I find looking back over the older posts sometimes quite surprising in what my thoughts were at the time, its quite amazing on how over the years your views and goals in life change and you forget what you used to strive for.

I guess I am just going through me mid life crisis. I have earned it and boy am I gonna have it !!!

Tata for now........

Fallen Angel

Getting Bored

2009-09-25T21:26:00.002+01:00

Don't know why, but I am really struggling to find any enthusiasm to play over the last couple of weeks, every time I sit down to try and grind a session out, I get bored after a 100 hands or so, I don't think I have played a session of more than 350 hands since the first week. Its strange cos I have been running ok over the last 3k hands, pulling some of the bad start back. I think I may be about even for the month taking into account the rakeback.

I had already decided to take a bit of a rest in October as we are off to sunny yorkshire for a relaxing week, if the 3G holds up on the lappy, was just gonna play a few sngs and MTTs for a change, but I'm not sure I'm even gonna bother doing that.

So all my aim for this month is to reach the Laddies gold level, which I prob only need to play about 700 more points to get there, then decide what to do. Will def be back for a big push in November, as I don't want this year to end with less than $3k profit, as that is def a big step backwards.

Will prob play some cash later on tonight when the fish come back from the pub, lets just hope they ain't got their lucky boots on and suck out on me.

Hope the fun comes back into poker soon, or I will end up going to the Gym every night like I used to before I found poker !!

Gonna take a couple hundred quid out of me bankroll as well to pay for a Rammstein gig at the NEC in Feb, awesome band live. By using a piece of me bankroll it will at least makes it seem that it is worth while sat in front of a PC for hours on end.

So here are the boys live......

August Round up

2009-09-02T11:36:00.002+01:00

August sought of fizzled out a bit, I ended up playing a bit robotically and it showed in my results, going back to my old calling station routine. Was a decent month, but should of been my best this year, but it was not to be, but was still $660 up overall, which was originally my target per month at the start of the year, but that idea has gone up the swanny.

I am off work this week, so decided that this month was the perfect opportunity to grind out 40k hands plus and get the laddies VIP and some nice rakeback etc. I also chose the 1st sept to try out loads of new things in my game. What happened was the singlemost worse day of my poker life, I finished the day 13.5 buyins down. Yep you read it right, 13.5 DOWN !!! That was in approx 3.3k hands. The crazy thing is, it don't matter, I learnt a lot, yep expensive, but I did learn. It didn't help in the fact that every fooking muppet and he dog hit everything against me, I also lost about 5 buyins overall with some shocking calls for 25bb+ "just to see if my read was right" lol, well thats my excuse and I am sitting to it.

Had a lot of strange thoughts during this massacre, ranging from "ok, I am gonna get a coach and destroy this game" to "thats it, i'm taking all me money out of every fcking poker site and giving up" The latter one normally came when the fish hit there miracle two outer to stack me after I have played the hand perfectly.

Think I will however drop back to 4 tables from 6 for a while, mainly due to the fact that if I get a beat, I def find myself chasing on other tables to get it back, that prob contributed to a couple of buyins, I suppose it was tilt, but it didn't really feel like the adrenaline fuelled tilt that I have had in the past.

So I guess for now, I am still gonna grind it out, target for the month is to just break even now loooooool.

Good Luck at the tables.

Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight

Running Hot

2009-08-16T22:04:00.004+01:00

Well warm at least, for a change I have been dishing out some muff twice I have got it all in with QQ on a low flop only to walk into AA/KK and both times been awarded with a two outer to stack my oppo, on one of them, he was as tight as a nats chuff, so I decided to ck raise him post flop to see if he really did have AA/KK, of course he shoved so I had my answer, then before I could fold, the iccle gremlin in me head goes, "ah call anyway, just to see" I did manage to fold AA post flop after doing the same on a 468 double suited flop vs two fish, they ended up all in, one with a flopped set of 4's the other with the nut flush draw which he duly spiked, felt pleased with my laydown and saved meself 70BB. Its these sorts of laydowns that build up and save you a lot of $ p/hour in the long run.

Been 4 tabling comfortably for a while, but I have upped this to 6 tables and seem to be coping quite well with it for now, think I am gonna play most of my week like this then choose maybe 1 or 2 sessions a week where I just play two and try some different things out.

Also revamped my bankroll strategy, basically building for the future. Decided I am definitely going to stick to a 100 buyin rule now, but as added protection, I am gonna make this in ££ even for the €€ tables. This should also then allow to have some room to play 10-20 MTTS a month as well, I do enjoy them now and then, but have to be in the right mood, I find after playing cash tables all the time now, I have lost a lot of my patience in MTTs, which obviously, is a big no no.

Overall, played about 13.5k hands this month and running about 3.5ptbb/100. Which is not the best stats in the world, but I am happy to run at that, my minimum to move up the levels is 3, so I am above that at the moment, but over such a small sample, 1 session can change that quite a bit. Up about $650 on the month and I think I got a $90 bonus to come next week, so looking good. Almost certainly won't make the 30k hands I had hoped for as I have been distracted on quite a few evenings and I got a weekend on the piss coming up at the end of the month. Still hope to play well over 20k hands, which will probably be the most I have done.

Lets hope things can carry on like they are at the moment and I can make the most of this hot streak and clock up some $$$.

PJ Harvey - Down by the water

A welcome bankroll boost

2009-08-09T21:22:00.004+01:00

I know a few posts ago after I managed to muff my my to 3rd in a $20 donkament on LuckyAcePoker I said I was gonna play a few more tournies, but like most things men say, we just don't get round to doing them, it came as a great surprise when last Wednesday I entered the 3€ 19:15 High Stack on laddies and even more amazingly enough managed to win the foooker. The €222 1st prize was a welcome boost the old bankroll. Throughout the tournie, I did nowt special, just took my time, played big pots with big hands and got away cheaply when I hit nowt. The only real bit of luck was when I was down to about 8 big blinds with about 16 left and I was dealt AT in mid position which is really an automatic shove and got snap called by the button who turned over KK, not an ace in site, but the TTx flop did help a tadge. After that, just played solidly till the last 5. One player (can't remember his name) was dominating the play raising 4 out 5 hands, he was on my button and must of had my blinds 10 rounds on the trot before I found a hand I could defend with, he was soooo annoying, but only in the fact that he was playing the game hard, he eventually went out 3rd after overplaying his agression. Heads up I managed to get a decent 2-1 chip lead when I was dealt JJ, I raised, he re raised and I shoved, he flipped AK and hit the ace on the turn and I was back fighting again. After about 10 mins I got slightly in the lead when I raised with Qc9c and he flat called, the flop was 345, with two clubs on the board, I bet, he raised and I shoved. the chips went in and he turned over J5. I rivered the floooosh and he was not a happy bunny. It was just a matter of time before the victory came. He started whinging about my luck, what he doesn't know is how much I bluffed him off pots leading prior to the muff, sometimes when you are heads up, you are happy with 2nd and just don't care, so I butchered him, nearly all of my grinding pots were none showdown, if I can get the hand history up in some sort of replayer I will, just to show him how outplayed he was (blatent brag I know, but so true) I guess he just annoyed me saying it was all luck after he called an all in with J5 on that 345 board after I had raised pre, he obv did not give any consideration to my holding, he just thought " I have top pair" Overall though, was very chuffed with the win, that along with the support on www.krackedkings.com made me feel great. If your not a member get you ass over there, it is def the best community on the net, you will be made very welcome. I do have to give a special thanks to Lexus and Kaz who kept me company on MSN and gave me incredible support, special friends indeed.

On the cash front, been another up/down week, played about 8.7k hands so far this month and I am just over a buyin up, better than being down.

So overall, poker life is rosy at the moment, long may it continue. Having a night off tonight as I have been down the old rub a dub and can feel the muff coming out in me, so keeping away from the felt. Lets hope next week can be as good.

Current Bankroll = $7450 (exchange rate helped this week !!)
Years profit to date = $1937.36

As i'm having an early night, summat to help you sleep.

The Cure - Lullaby

Grindaments

2009-08-01T14:38:00.003+01:00

Managed to finish July in profit at the tables, not a big profit as you can see, but none the less it was in the black which is more than the previous two months were, with some rakeback + bonuses was about $300 up on month over the 18k or so hands played.

The drop in levels and the adjust of playing styles has def helped, although over the 18k hands I only changed my vpip + pfr by about 3 points each. I was hoping for this to be higher, but a few coolers 1/3rd way through the month made me slightly more cautious, this is an obv leak and is something to work on, each hand should be played on its own merits and previous wins/losses should not change that.

Gonna start a new health kick today, I have not managed to stick with any of the previous ones, hopefully this will also help with my concentration and confidence.

Augusts aim is to try and grind out 30k hands at a minimum, ideally would like to make the laddies VIP, but at 20NL where I am going to stay for this month, thats going to be quite tricky, if I get close 3/4 way through month, might move back up to 50NL, but only if I feel I am playing well.

Also gonna try and post more, maybe even put a weekly graph up, not sure yet.

Thats it for now, this mornings session finished in 1/2 buyin profit after 700 or so hands, so its back to the tables to catch a fish or two.

Current Bankroll = $6850.
Years profit to Date = $1507.64

Garbage - Paranoid

Time to Learn

2009-07-04T13:22:00.002+01:00

Current Bankroll = $6257

It was def a time to change my game, so I over the last week or so, I have done what I set out to do. Dropped down a level and changed the way I play. So far it has paid off, almost 5 buyins up over 2.3k hands and feeling much more confident about my game. Its actually amazing how if you crank up the aggression, you feel much more in control of the hand when you are in play and the decisions seem to be easier, also I was surprised in the difference in play at 20NL, the players are much much poorer than I thought and you can just value bet them to death, they just don't know how to fold, this obv means they hit there gutshots, but these tend to stick out like a sore thumb anyway and are quite easy to get away from. I also actually feel like I am putting in to practice all the stuff I have learned off cardrunners over the last year or so. So many times at 50NL, I think to myself I should do this because, and then don't do it. Dropping down a level has now allowed me to test these theories and moves and not worry about the $$. I feel like I have been released from my chains.

Will prob stay at 20NL for this month and maybe next month to boost the confidence then move back up and try and play the same. I was definitely stagnating at 50NL before and I feel I have made the right decision even though my bankroll is much bigger than needed for the levels I play at. You may of noticed I have also decided to publish my bankroll on every post now, I know people are nosey and hopefully I can start seeing that grow again.

Played a couple of MTTs on lucky ace again, cashed in both, so looking to play a few more of these over the next few months, Ian managed another 3rd in one of the challenges for a cool $1.3k, if that fish can do it, i'm sure I can sneak into a couple of $1k + paydays.

Anyway, thats enough for today, played about 500 hands this am and was up just over a buyin, but its as I am off work till weds now and the wife is in Spain visiting her parents, its time for the Pub. Gonna cheer the lions on, I know the series is lost, but with all the bad blood around the eye gouging last week, I reckon there could be a big punch up on the cards, which should be a laugh.

Catcha later and good luck at the tarbs.

So when the wife is away and the suns out theres only..............

One way of Life - The Levellers

Darkest of Times

2009-06-23T23:53:00.002+01:00

Well, I thought it couldn't get any worse, but it has. My last post mentioned about trying to win on a saturday, well I actually managed it for the first time in about 6 weeks, I finished the day after about 1.2k hands $10 profit, the downpoint was that I was only in profit due to one massive winning hand, I think prob my biggest ever, bear in mind that this is euros not dollars, it def made me smile for a change. Heres the hand

And that is that, the rest has been a downward spiral, kings running into aces at all corners, Aces getting cracked everytime I play them (apart from the above of course)

Over the last 2 months, I have played 26k hands and I have ran at -5.52 ptbb/100, when the previous 4 months, was ticking over comfortably in profit at 3ptbb/100 and thinking about moving up to 100NL, what a difference two months makes.

Of course the confidence is in shatters so I have decided to rebuild my game from scratch, I am definitely 2 nitty to be a big winner, but at 50NL I believe my current style of play which comes in about 15/11 can make a steady profit as long as you table select well, but thinking about the long term future as we all want to move up, I need to open my game up a lot more.

Its prob not the best time to change, but I think it is necessary, ultimately I wanna be averaging out about 18/16 depending on the table conditions of course.

Will prob drop down a level and only play a max of 3 tables, maybe 2 at 20NL and still 1 at 50NL.

One big of good news was that I was soooooo pissed off with the cash tables I decided to enter a donkament last night, the $20 $3k G on LuckyAcePoker on the pacific network, considering I wasn't really concentrating and was playnig Bejewelled the whole time during the tournie, I somehow managed to get to the final table with a medium stack. I then got lucky when getting down to about 12bb when I shoved with AQ only to run into QQ, but for once the river was my friend and the Ace popped out, from then on it went well and when we got to the last 3 I was Chip Leader on about 120k with the other 2 on about 90k a piece. Already guarenteed $300 I was happy, but $600 and $900 beckoned and I could do with a boost. The crucial hand came when I got dealt AsAd on the Big blind. Button folded and the small blind, an agressive fcker limped. I bet the pot and he insta shoved. I called obv and was chuffed to bollocks that the fish flipped over KdQh. The flop came 4s5s7s to also give me the nut flush draw. We were soon to be heads up................................but noooooooooooooooooo. The turn bought the Kc and I screamed out, "DON'T you FOOOOOKING DARE" of course we all know this is totally in vain and the river bought the case Kh for him to scoop the pot. "ooops" came the reply in the chat box. FOOKING OOOOOOOOOOPs my arse !!!!!!!!!

I couldn't belive it, to cap it all, I then pushed with A8 the next hand, and the fish snap called with KQ again and K on the flop and Goth was out 3rd. I was still in shock and not a happy bunny, but after reflecting for a bit, I did have my bit of luck with the AQ and as its only about the 4th tourney I have played in 3 months, I can't really complain.

I still don't know where I am really heading with my poker, we have booked a holiday for Canada in April next year which has come in at a hefty price and was really hoping that this years profits were going to pay for it, but as the only profit I got now is bonuses and rakeback, 1.3k is not going to go far !!!!!

Surely it must turn, I am a sucker for punishment, the money don't matter any more, its the challenge that I can actually beat this stooopid fish game. I need to take a step back and look at how I am learning, or in fact, if I am actually learning anything at all, or just blindly plodding on. Only time will tell, but for now, I am not gonna give up. July is gonna be another new start (how many of them do we have ffs !!!!! )

One day, the tables may fear me, but for now, I am just another fish in the pond.

The Cardigans - Higher

Variance

2009-06-13T10:14:00.002+01:00

Hardly played this week mainly cos I am running colder than a penguins chuff. I thought last month was bad, in the first 8 days of this month, I was already down more than the whole of last month, in fact if I take the last two weeks of May, I have managed to lose my whole years profit at the tables in just over 4 weeks, unbelievably sick poker. If it wasn't for rakeback and bonuses I would actually be at a loss over the year, but somehow I am still $1.3k up, which is way below where I wanted to be.

Luckily my nitty bankroll management is keeping me alive and also reading "The Poker Mindset" has helped me cope with all that is going on.

Not gonna give up, gonna just try and concentrate more.

Thats it for now, lets see if I can get a winning saturday under my belt for the first time in about 6 weeks !!!

NIN - Hurt

May....sigh

2009-05-31T18:51:00.003+01:00

Well thank fck may is over with, just plain and simple a bad month. I have looked back and gone through all of the big losing pots I have had and to be fair its about a 50/50 split between bad play and sick beats.

The only saving grace is that I will get $500 of the months losses back in the next few days when all the bonuses are paid back.

I didn't get anywhere near the 30k hands that I intended to play as after that mad tilt day I had, I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and 4 table for hours on end, so I finished up doing about my normal amount of hands which was about 16.7k

Gonna take it a bit easy next month, only playing when I feel like it, not cos I have to get a certain amount of hands in. Will probably play a bit more on NOIQ again, just to ensure I get some rakeback next month, as I am not sure I will play enough hands on laddies to get into the decent cash. The exchange rate is hitting the bonuses a bit as well, which doesn't help, been taking most of me $$ out of my accounts where I can, seems like the £ is only going one way at the moment.

Some good news in the fact we have decided where we are going on holiday next year, its the wifes 40th, so wanted to do something special. We have chosen Canada and are looking to book an all in one trip for 16 days with all of the tours booked in, if we get the trip that we are after it should be pretty cool, as there is a 3000 mile train ride across the country which I am really looking forward to, gonna have to do Niagra Falls as well, as its one of the places I have always wanted to see, I guess being an ex swimmer, I will always have a fascination with water.

Also starting "another" diet/fitness tomorrow, 1st June seems as good as any other day to start, really gotta stick to it this time, I look back through a lot of my old posts about all the positive thinking and fitness goals that I keep setting and yet none of them have paid off. I guess this time its now or never.

So lets hope June turns out to be a good month, 1k richer and 1 stone lighter, well, thats the plan anyway.

Todays track is from prob the best band around at the moment.

Foo Fighters - The Pretender

Time to reflect

2009-05-18T23:50:00.004+01:00

Poker is the strangest of games, massive highs followed by the deepest of lows. At the moment, I am in an all time low in my confidence. After the major tilt I had last week, I managed to pull myself together and pull back some of the loss over the 7 day period following, I did not play much, but when I did, I didn't make any mistakes.

Tonight however, I was back in my old calling station mode, stacking off too light yet again, I thought this was one of the leaks I had removed from my game, however it def reared its ugly head again. 3 times tonight I walked into sets and stacked off. Once with KK and I couldn't lay down post flop, even when I put him on a set or str8, I still called the river shove. Then stacked off with AQs on a QTx board after I had 3 bet pre and he flat called with TT. The final one was just a cooler after I raised pre with 88 and the board came T82. I bet the flop, got raised, I min raised and he shoved. My heart knew he had TT, but I am never folding in that spot, there are so many other hands he could have, I just would have to pay him off if he had it, which of course he did.

So after a good start to the month on laddies taking me 5 buyins up in the first two days, the next 17 days have been a 14 buying downswing, by far the biggest of my cash game playing days.

I thought I was prepared for it, but I guess I am not. the strange thing is, its not the actual amount of $$ that I have lost as I am well overolled, but its the blow to the confidence that I may not actually be able to make a profit out of this game and that I am not getting any better.

I really would like to take a couple of weeks off, but I might have to wait until June as of course if I stop now, I would end up losing my ground in the rake race on laddies which at the moment, if I can stay at my current loss for the month, will still make the month profitable as I would be getting $600 courtesy of lads/rake the rake.

The other annoying thing is that I always like to reach milestones, only small ones, but they provide me with incentives to play, the last one was just getting my laddies balance above £1000, which by the 8th of this month I had managed to do, however as you can see by the last 10 days or so, that balance has almost halved, again its not really about the money, its more about the failure.

So its def time to reflect on what to do. Some people say take a break, others say ride it out. I was one of the people that would always say ride it out if you are playing well, but at the moment, I don't think that is the case.

I think I will see how tomorrow goes, then I have got a live event down me local on weds, then a few winonas at the quiz on Thursday, so that will be a couple of days off at least. With the bank holiday coming up I think it might be a good idea to do a couple of day trips to take my mind of poker for a bit, hopefully this will clear the mind so I can get my focus back and start getting the graph pointing the right way again.

Anyway, for those of you haven't seen this clip, if you are as down as I am with poker at the moment, things could always be worse........always makes me smile

Oh, and if your not a poker fan and don't know who Dave Ulliot, the song is loosely based on one of my fave bands at the moment

The Ting Tings - Thats not my name.

Lessons to be learnt

2009-05-10T00:44:00.002+01:00

Well, today I have learned a very valuable lesson. I am not ice cold emotionally at the tables. I thought I had learned to control myself and take all on the chin. But not today. I thought I had tilted on the odd occasion, but I was wrong, I now know what it is like to tilt properly. I just lost the plot and in the space of 3 hours, lost 7 buyins playing like a complete aggro fish, just trying to chase all draws and push everyone off whatever they had. Of course, I didn't hit any of the draws and they always had the nuts when I pushed in. The annoying thing is, I actually got me cards in ahead on some of the tilts, ie in the case where I 4 bet with 88 then snap called his 5 bet shove for stacks with it, he showed up with AK and the river obliged him the Ace for a juice 220bb pot.

Another annoying thing was that I had pulled back all the losses from last weekends muff beatings and was back on track for a good month, now I am only about $94 in profit after the rakeback and bonuses......Such a fooking fish. Still $2000 up on the year, but this way behind where I want to be.

Seriously thinking about getting some coaching, so might blow $500 of me roll on some of this, got a couple of peeps lined up from card runners who look like they would suit my personality. Maybe they can teach me a bit more about self control, which I obv have not got as much of as I first thought, maybe some meditation is needed.

Oh well, rant over, tomorrows just another day.

April Roundup

2009-05-01T11:36:00.003+01:00

Another good month, getting a bit worried though, I set some strict bankroll rules a while a go for moving up to 100NL, mainly being $7.5k bankroll and running at least 3ptbb/100 for the last 30k hands. I have ran at about 3.3ptbb/100 the last two months and my roll is now at $6.7k with all of this months bonuses to come, which means if all goes well this month, come the Start of June, I may have to jump out of my comfort Zone.

There was nothing special about this month, the only difference was actually winning on the laddies tables, as the players on Microgaming network def seem to gamble it up more than on NOIQ, getting it all in on flop for 100BB with an open ended str8 draw seems common place, even with 3 to a flush on board in some cases, abs bonkers. So obv plays like that ensures you get some crazy beats. Had my fair share of monsters getting cracked as well, had AA/KK cracked 4 times in 4 bet pots where they flat called my 4 bet pre and the chips went in on the flop, 3 times Q high flop, once a J high flop, obv in those cases they had QQ and JJ. So thats 400euro up the swanny str8 away.

After conversion to $$ finished the month up about $750, slightly less than last month, but I have still got $300 bonus off laddies/rtr to come, which will go into Mays profits, so overall, quite happy.

I'm off work now until next weds and the wife is on the piss in spain with her mates, so its gonna be some serious grinding over the next few days. I am gonna try and make 30k hands this month, just need to keep away from the pub for the next few days, which could be difficult as theres some good footy on over the weekend. I can't believe we pay about £55 for sky and multiroom so I can watch the footy at home and not disturb the missus and I still fook off down the pub and spend £20 watching the game down there !!! Still always good for the craic, if not the liver.

So back to the grind, i-tunes blasting out proper mans tunes of course.......

Evanescence - Everybody´s Fool

Feeling Positive

2009-04-13T11:21:00.002+01:00

Woke up this morning feeling strangely positive about everything, dunno if its the chemicals from all the easter eggs, but I def feel different, almost as if all of a sudden, everything is gonna go my way. So, I guess I'll just have to wait for summat to come and smack me in the face and but me back down a peg or two.

Poker been going very well, had a great weekend, being up almost 6 buyins after converting to $$. Moving up the laddies rake race a lot easier than I thought I would, although I am going away this weekend, so will miss 3 nights of what would normally be my biggest points earner, which is a bit of a wounder. Might give it a real go in May if they keep the payout structure similar, I hear they are extending it to the top 3500, which is a shame, as it will surely mean the $$ being spread out more, but I'm gonna aim to come in the top 1000 at least and see where that gets me. Looks like I have found a way to get double rake payout as well, which will mean at least 60% rakeback which is cool. Not everyone can qualify for this as it depends on how you joined ladbrokes, but email me for details if you want, there is no harm in trying.

The $$ are also rolling in on NOIQ as well, not through rakeback, but through actual winnings at the tables. Since I have adopted a better table selection strategy on there, my winnings have gone through the roof, prob winning 800euro over the last 8 weeks on there since making the change, I didn't realise what a difference it makes, there is so much money to be made on that site if you find the right fish (and they don't suck out obv)

I also gotta give a mention to Ian, who was the subject of my post a couple of weeks ago. He got to the weekly final of the Littlewoods WSOP qualifier and was chip leader with 5 left, with the winner getting a $17k wsop main event package, he played some awesome poker, but it was not to be, eventually going out 3rd. I was absolutely gutted for him and I bet he feels the same. I think its only a matter of time before he brings down something real big, I think he has got a great future ahead of him in tournies, might have to get him to teach me a thing or to.

Off out this afternoon to visit my Mom, but hopefully will get a few hours in later in tonight and keep the good run going. So Ta Ta for now.....

Crank up the sound, its time to get spooooooky

Lush - Undertow (Spooky remix)

March - Sooo different to last year

2009-03-31T21:26:00.005+01:00

March has turned out to be a very good month, in fact, at the cash tables its been my best month ever. Played just under 16k hands at 50NL and have ran at 3.42ptbb/100. This believe it or not is bar far my best winrate over a semi decent sample. It also should of been a lot better. As you can see by the months graph, it was a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the first 11k hands, as I was up and down like a crack whores scutty red G string. I made way to many river hero calls and stacked off light too many times. Sometimes you need to be burnt a few times before you stop putting your hand in the flame. I think I am starting to learn when I am beat and have started keeping away from marginal situations, where I am pretty sure I am beat, but would always call out of curiosity. I think I have mentioned this on my blog before, but sometimes you really have gotta go with your gut instinct, your not always gonna be right, but in the long run, making those big laydowns are probably gonna save you more money than you are going to make.

The last 5k hands it looks like I have ran hot, but I don't think I did, one thing I did change is table selection, before I would just look for a table with 3-4 full stacks and 1-2 60bb stacks. I still do this, but I now re-evaluate the play on the table as to whether or not its gonna be profitable to stay or not. If I don't think theres gonna be money flowing, or theres no fish, I get up and leave, there are plenty of other tables out there and better opportunities.

I know the winrate on my last 5k hands is unsustainable as I ran at nearly 10ptbb/100, but I can definitely see an improvement in my game, something I was beginning to wonder if was ever going to come.

I still have a problem value betting the river when big danger cards hit. This hand is a classic example. When the river hits, my mind automatically thinks he is calling with his set and has just boated up, or even worse has been slo playing his str8 flush, monsters under the bed as its called I think and I then check behind for safety. The crazy thing, if he had shoved, I would still probably have called, so why the fck don't I value bet it !!!

Still $900 profit for the month, I guess playing 50NL in euros helps, as the its sort of playing at 70NL really in terms of $$. I slight shift up I guess, i'm such a nit ;-))

I guess I still have a lot to learn and have to control my fears more and take the fish to value town........Until the next post, GL at the tables and don't be fooled in the morning.

Poker = Easy Money

2009-03-25T20:40:00.002Z

Well the headline of this post may shock you, but it must be true I now have overwhelming proof.

One of my bestest buds Ian (tipster), who was me best man when I got married in Vegas plays a bit of cards himself. In fact he does know a fair bit about texas holdem poker, however as I've know him for 20+ years now, he is, and always will be a big floppy fish to me.

To be fair, the guy is quite an intelligent little muppet and the aging process has been fairly kind to him over the years, he even has a few marbles left in his bag at the age of 50, although he does have a remarkable resemblance to Mr Bean, which his kids remind him on a daily basis.

So, back to the reason why poker is easy. Tipster has recently being dipping his big fishy gills in a proper ocean, namely the poker one that is called Pacific. He has been mainly playing sngs after he managed to con a free copy of sharkscope of some dodgy affiliate probably. Even more suprisingly, he has been doing quite well. In fact so well he has started playing way above his station and entering the 50$ 20k guaranteed. After a few near misses, the big fat tench made a final table and cashed for about $1.1k, which is bigger than any tourney win I have had so far, I couldn't believe it, he must of dished out some serious muff on the way. However the man did not stop there, a few days later, the whale did it again, this time he came 3rd pulling in an even nicer $2.4k. To say I was stunned is an understatement, but I was really chuffed for the little fella.

So you may think it stops there, but no. I was grinding away at me normal 50NL 6 max on Friday night when shortly after midnight I had had enough and decided to hit the sack early for a change. I always take me mobile to bed as I am on call for work, but I was soon spark out asleep. At about 01:45, my phone started buzzing and I was relieved it was just a text, which at least it meant it was not a call off work. But intrigued to know who the fck was texting me at that time in the morning I checked it out and almost passed out with the shock. The text was from Ian and simply said "Ooh, Just WON 20k G, 5.4k - I am legend"

Well what can you say, I was speechless, the fish had grown up into a shark. It can't just be luck to make the FT of that tourney 3 times in 10 days, I really have to bow down to the man and smile with extreme happiness and and green with envy.

The only thing the mupp did wrong was to tell the wife, which has now cost him a trip to Barcelona and a kitchen refurb, when will he ever learn.

So, I guess this little tale should be inspiration to everyone who plays poker. You def don't need to be the best online poker player in the world to bring home some decent bacon, just a little effort in learning the game properly is required, along with a few prayers to the poker gods that dish out the muffs and we can all be running around our lounges at 1:45am in the morning in our underpants screaming "WHOSE THE DADDY" !!!!

Time to get me canoe out on that ocean I think. Its Poker Time for me.......

So todays song is dedicated to you dude, you are truly a god amongst men and when I grow up, I wanna be just like you.........you are my hero

Milestone Reached

2009-03-22T07:06:00.002Z

I know this milestone is not much for some people, but for a small stakes player like myself its quite a psychological boost.

I have always kept very accurate records of my profits and loss since I first started playing in December 2003 and as of last night, I officially went through the $20,000 profit margin since I first started. I am really pleased, as I have been hovering just under it for quite a while now, but never going above it, but 5 winning days on the trot on the cash tables got me head above it, and hopefully will stay there.

I guess the next milestone is $50,000 profit. Lets hope that can come before the end of 2010 !!!

One can but dream and reach for the stars.

Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas

Been Busy

2009-03-16T22:54:00.004Z

Yep, actually been playing some poker for a change. So far this month I have played over 11k hands on NOIQ and I am running at just over 1ptbb/100. Which although not outstanding, is at least in profit. Been a tough grind though. I have been muffed, given out some muff and made some muff calls. So, you could say its been a bit of a muffy month !!!!!!!!

Managed to win me biggest pot so far, all in 3 way for stacks post flop and of course, numpty here, has to get it in with the worst of it, pretty positive I was behind, but with an almost certainty that all 3 were going in, I thought it was worth a punt.

Heres the hand

Also managed to get it all in pre tonight with JJ against a loose muff who I thought was at it, only to find he actually did have AA. But the poker gods were with me and a flop of J44 bought a big grin to me face, especially as I didn't even see it as i had the reload window up and only realised I had won the hand when I got the transaction failed message on me reload as I was above the max, always a pleasant surprise that one.

If you looked at my graph over the 11k hands, it looks like one of those blippy things on a life support machine, so up and down its untrue. I am still making some horrific calls, especially when I get raised on the river. I totted it up over the month and I have donked off over 4 buyins with shitty river calls when if I actually sat back and thought about the way the hand had played out it was an obvious fold.

Overall enjoying it on NOIQ, there seems to be a lot of regs, and as I can't datamine, I end up having to play with them to build up some stats to find out which ones are just nitty rake racers as opposed to the ones that can actually play.

Getting the bonuses isn't as easy as I thought it was gonna be, prob only gonna get about 100e max + $100 from my affiliate, not like the good old days of sun when they were on crypto, getting $200 bonus easy and then your 40% rakeback on top !!! Although to be fair, the bonuses on NOIQ do look good better value the more VIPs you get, but you realistically gotta be playing at least 100NL, or be 6 tabling 50NL for 60 hours a week to get summat decent. Maybe one day......

Still, will keep on grinding on. Ta Ta for now and keep on muffing.

Dexys - There There My Dear

Bad end and a good start

2009-03-02T20:14:00.003Z

Feb ended with big slump, was up on the month going into saturday night when I started having disco problems on Sun Poker, I spent half an hour trying to sort it to no avail, so decided to call it a day for the month so mooched around on the forums for a bit, it was to be my last day on there for a while, so wasn't that bothered, being up on the month was happy too. While mooching the forums, found a couple of people having the same issues as me, so I thought I would try a couple of the resolutions. At first they didn't seem to work, but lo and behold after 30 mins, it seemed stable enough to play. Well, I think you can guess what happened next, yep, I played like a complete and utter cock and managed to donk off almost 3 buyins and ended up the month $84 down overall, was sooooo mad at meself. I still seem to play solid poker for 90% of the time, then have 1 or 2 days when I have a rush of blood and lose 2+ buyins in short succession through bad play. So following this, I did what any normal person does and withdrew my whole roll from sun, that will teach them to fck around with me !!!

So, 1st of a new month, new hope and a new site, well, not new, but back to NOIQ now on the enteraction network. I had played a few hands on there last month, just to test out holdem manager and get some sort of hud set up. I wasn't to be disappointed, the players on there seemed awful and for once my hands held. For the first time since I have being playing 50NL cash, I actually finished the day over $200 up after conversion (Was approx 160euros)

Was looking forward to getting some more hours in on there tonight, but it looks like the site is fcked at the moment, with waiting lists 18 deep on my tables and constant hangs on my PC, so might have to have a little dabble on laddies cash, see how it goes.

Full of hope and optimism at the moment, poker is such a wonderful game when your hands hold up, lets hope i don't lose the plot and try to avoid the temptation to try to outplay my opponents who have no fold button on there little scandi screens.

New Order - Temptation

Frustration

2009-02-22T22:54:00.004Z

Been a real frustrating few days at the tables. It seems that when I play bad I just lose loads of money, no muff reward days for old Goth, unlike the fish who constantly play bad and seem to get rewarded all the time. When I play well, I either have smallish winning days, or I get muffed to fck.....This weekend I feel I have played quite well and just got a bit unlucky. I guess thats just the way it is. I so want to stick with 6 max as I really do enjoy it when it goes to plan, but at the moment, i'm not sure I am good enough to be more than just a break even player. I guess for the time being I need to ensure that I am getting some decent bonuses just to cover the learning stage, which at the moment seems to be taking longer than it does to teach a blonde to tie her shoe laces !!!

I have therefore decided to go back to NOIQ next month and try and grind out some bonuses and maybe even make a bit in some of the races. Although I am away on courses for work for 6 days out of the month, so will be missing a bit. The wife is away in spain for a week though, so might be able to do some serious grinding at the tables.

Ignore the two previous posts, as I am just gonna use them as blog entries to keep a track of me big winning hands and losing hands from a link at the side of the blog.

One good thing is that I am no longer losing it when I get stiffed on the river, days of flying mice and roaring expletives that make the dog shoot up the stairs in shear terror. The tilt is well under control, well for now anyway.

Gary Jules - Mad World

Goths Big Winning Hands 2009

2009-02-22T22:53:00.013Z

15th March 2009

Two for the price of one, managed to stack this fella twice in about 10 hands. Sweeeeeeet......

Hand 5
Hand 6

-----------------------
13th March 2009

My biggest pot to date at 50NL. Got it in behind vs two oppos, but sometimes you just gotta gamble ;-)

Hand 4

------------------------
8th Feb 2009

For once going with my instinct payed off, put villain on AJ and stuck to my guns.

Hand 3

-------------------------
4th Feb 2009

As this is in euros, I think this may be one of the biggest pots I have ever won. Was close though, when the chips went in on the turn, I was 50/50 vs one of the other two, always nice to see them hold.

Hand 2

--------------------------
1st Feb 2009

Standard Hand holding up.

Hand 1

---------------------------

Bored Bored Bored

2009-02-16T22:36:00.003Z

Really struggling to find the enthusiasm to play poker at the moment and I am not sure why. When I do play i don't seem to be doing that bad, cash tables I am up. Struggling to get any momentum going in any mtts, but I always find my tournie results tend to come in streaks , also as I am only playing a few a month anyway, I can't really expect that much.

Had a couple of interesting hands in the space of 5 mins on a 50NL table on iPoker this evening.

This hand was against the table fish and he is the reason I am sitting at the table, typical loose nutcase playing 56/24. Unfortunately I couldn't get on his left, but I still want to get in as many pots with him as possible. Of course the result was not what I wanted and to be fair he actually played the hand quite well. Be interested to hear any comments on how I played the hand and whether or not you think I could of got away from it cheaper at any point.

Hand 1

The next hand happened about 5-6 hands later, I had got dealt AA and had 3 bet the villain pre and he had to fold, so it is highly likely that he may of thought I was tilting a bit when this hand came to fruition. As it happened, I think i played it perfectly, although the flat call pre was possibly the only error.

Hand 2

Only played about 2500 hands this month, which is pretty poor, got a few clear nights now, no more parties etc for a good two weeks, so hopefully should be able to grind at least another 5000 out by the end of the month, will not be the 10k I hoped for, but should do for now.

Very conscious I have not been updating me blog lately, dirk keeps giving me stick for it, so a bigger effort is needed. Gonna try and get a better hand section for the bigger winning hands and maybe a few of the bigger losing ones as well, just gotta work out how to do it within this damn blog dashboard, gotta be an easy way somewhere to store a page with a load of hand history links out there on another page/link, if any of you bloggers out there have any advice, feel free to leave a comment.

Todays track will always bring back memories of my first festival, it was reading in '95 I think. The first artist I ever saw was Heather Nova in one of the side tents. I clearly remember walking in and her first song she played was "sugar" and as the bass bellowed out, I could feel my diaphragm shaking booming, was an awesome feeling. Chose a different track today though, prob cos I couldn't find a decent version of sugar.

Heather Nova - Island

Planning Phase

2009-02-01T11:30:00.002Z

Been reading through my last post and thinking a lot. I think one of the biggest mistakes when trying to make changes to your life is to just jump in and try an do things to quickly. Its back to the scenario about changing the autopilot. Your can't really just flick a switch on hit and expect to head of in the right direction and stay on course.

So I plan to use February as a phased change. The changes will hopefully work on all aspects of my life and not just poker. Just subtle changes day by day, which by the end of the month will ensure that these are done automatically without thinking.

So thats the psycho bullshit out the way, now what about the poker !! Well Jan went ok, proper middle of the road stuff. Only played about 5k hands in total. But finished the month approx $330 up, most of which was again rakeback and bonuses. Probably not going to play that many hands this month either, aiming for about 10k this month. Going to watch a lot more cardrunners stuff and really try to put into practice what I see on there, which quite often I don't, not sure why as its glaringly obvious that it works. Def need to stop being so nitty and open up my game a bit.

Decided to stick on iPoker 6 Max 50NL for Feb as I have some bonuses to clear off on SunPoker. So will concentrate on playing there.

Laddies are moving over on to the Prima network and are doing some interesting stuff regards the cash tables there. Gonna be interesting to see how this pans out, depending on the traffic and the fish count, might give that a look in during March.

I really just want to settle down on one site that I am happy with, good fish, plenty tables, good bonuses and either decent rakeback/VIP. I think by the middle of the year I will of chosen my cash home and then really try and crank up the hours.

My ultimate aim for the year is that by december I am playing 30k+ hands per month at 100NL and running at least 1.5ptbb/100. Will be happy with that ready to build on it for 2010. Poker is very much about the long term and for now thats what intend to use February to plan for.

Bjork - All is full of Love

Priorities and Decisions

2009-01-12T23:15:00.002Z

Well the new year started and this was going to be the year my poker kicked on to a new level. The aim was to be a solid winner on the 6 seaters and become a much better player, with the obvious bigger profits to come. Well, I started to play on day 1 and I found it hard to pick up the enthusiasm to play. I stepped back and thought to myself "what do I really want to get out of this year" and I came up with a rather simple answer. Health and Happiness. Somewhere along the line, I have gotten all my priorities wrong. I've been spending far too many hours sat on me fat arse, grinding low stakes cash tables, for what amounts $500 a month. My health has suffered through lack of exercise and I have definitely not spent enough time with my friends and family. I haven't even hit a golf ball since November 2006, A game that I used to love so much, playing every opportunity I got, now just seems a dim memory. So I will be dusting the clubs down and hopefully give my good online buddy jat7065 a whipping.

So a decision has been made. My poker schedule is now going to fit around the rest of my life, not my life fitting in around my Poker schedule. I still intend to try and get 20+ hours in a week, but I won't be putting other things off now for fear of missing a fews hours at the tables, getting rakeback and grinding out some bonuses. Its all gonna be about quality rather than quantity.

Interesting enough, my very first session of the year, I played what I thought was my best poker ever, I felt I made the correct decision on everything I did. My stats were more aggressive than ever,making the right moves at the right time. Yet in the space of 20 mins, I got dealt KK twice and both times getting it all in pre finding my oppo with AA. i eventually left the session just over a buy in down and strangely feeling very good about it. I have managed to get away from a result focused mentality and left feeling good about all of my decisions, which in the long term will make me a more profitable player. I have managed to pull the loss back and I am in profit for the year, but not much.

I have started reading "The Poker Mindset" a book I had for christmas. Nearly all of the issues that it brings up that stop you being a truly big winning player I have and I desperately need to expel these thoughts from my head while I am playing. I def think I will need to read the book a couple of times at least to try and put into practice the ideas that they are trying to put across, hopefully I can use my time more wiseley to do this.

So my first priority now has to be my health. This time I am going to try and reprogram the auto pilot in me, so that I will not stray off the right course. Too many times I have just grabbed the steering wheel and headed of in the right direction for a period of time, then soon as I let go of the wheel, the ship just turns right back to where it is comfortable going. With my background in swimming and training full time for two years, I have all the mental tools to do this and all of the knowledge I gained sudying nutrition over the years now needs to be put into place for ME, not just dishing out advice to others.

As part of an incentive to change, I have started taking a weekly photo in just me tracky bottoms, visual stimulation of seeing your body change can act as a real spur. If all goes well, I may even publish it at the end of the year, maybe for all you fans of my facebook "speedo" pic, do another one, this time i'll tuck me bush in !!!

So for the first song of the year, its one about decisions.

Sleeper - What do I do know.

NoooooooooooooooIQ

2008-12-31T16:02:00.002Z

Well, with 2009 just around the corner, I thought I had all my plans set up ready to go for next year, then NOIQ announce they are moving away from iPoker, which throws the whole of it up in the air !!

Still not sure what to do, but will probably tinker about on a few sites in Jan before deciding where to play for the rest of the year.

Still gonna concentrate on cash, even though my records show that I made a slight loss over the year at the cash tables. Overall though, finished the year $6150 in profit, which is up on 2007, so can't really grumble. But most of that was from bonuses and rakeback, along with a couple of $1k promo MTT wins, I guess $$ is $$ at the end of the day, but I need to be winning at the tables to even consider moving up to the next level.

I have set my goals for 2009, will post what they are once Jan is in full flow and I have a better idea which sites I am gonna play with.

Overall 2008 has been a great year for me. Got a lot of work done on the house, new car, pay rise at work and still alive after all of the mad drinking binges.

Lets hope 2009 is even better, especially on the poker front, as I need to move to the next level if I am to fulfill my dream of playing poker full time for a living by May 2012, Happy new year to all of you that take the time to read my blog. I hopefully plan to put more into it next year and make it more interesting !!

Goth

New Order - True Faith

Its XMAS !!!!!!

2008-12-23T13:24:00.002Z

The one great thing about xmas shopping, is my xmas shopping day with my bud Stu. The day out is now legendary in our workplace and is now in its 19th year. The day consists of a big fry up breakfast at about 09:30. Then the traditional first pint in the Yard of Ale pub on New St in Brum at about 10:00am. Now this pub is amazing, in the 20 years that I have been going in there the only thing that has changed is the brand of cider and the now lack of fog from fags pf the customers, whose average age must be over 100. The decor, the layout, the carpet have not changed since time began, truly a pub amongst pubs.

The day then continues with a bit of shopping, then on to the next pub. I think you then start to get the jist of things. By 1pm, the time spent in the shops is exactly in proportion to bladder control and the need to get to a toilet to empty the previous pubs beverage. The only place to go to the bog is of course, another pub. A pattern quickly emerges.

The day always ends up with us in one of brums many casinos. The last two years, I have played in whatever tourney was going when I landed. This year, there was no tourney, just one cash table so I thought oh well, not going to play any poker. So sat at the bar and as we were so drunk we could not drink any more cider we did what any sensible human being does. Yes, you've guessed it, start drinking double Jack Daniels and ice, you know it makes sense. It was at approx 10pm we realise that we had not yet eaten as our normal routine of eating at 6pm was changed as another m8 met up with us on his way to the annual Pogues xmas gig, so we had to entertain him for 4-5 pints. So we managed to get some food, then Stu decides to call it a day and leave at midnight. I decide I need more drink so stay, with my eyes firmly set on the cash table. I drift over and see what is going on. As you all know, I play cash online at the 25c/50c tables at the moment. So, when I get to the table I find that they are playing £2/£5 well beyond my limits, so I walk away, not home, like I should of, but str8 to the cashier and whip out £500 and sit my arse firmly in at the poker table with the live fish.

So, the one thing in my favour when I sit down is body language. I can't see my cards cos I am that pissed, so if they get a read on me, fook knows what signals I will be giving off. Now this is where you all think a large tale of woe and bad beats is gonna come out. But no. Basically, they were shit, unbelievably shit.

The game started off interestingly, when I picked up KT sooooooted and raised. The dealer picked up one of my chips and threw it back at me. I thought thats strange, but carried on regardless. Now, when it got to the 6th time he did it, I had to say something, ie "why the fck do keep giving me some of my chips back when I raise ??"........"Its pot limit, SIR" came the polite but stern reply. I could feel myself blush as I realised I had played over 1/2 hour not even knowing it was Pot Limit, what a twat....

This didn't alter the fact that they were poor and played any ace from any postion. I am not the greatest cash player in the world, but even in my drunken state, somehow I managed to take about £300 off them. I think I might even try and go back sobre one day and see how I get on then, although I think when playing sobre, I might be thinking a bit too much about the money.

The following few days were a bit of a blur, as Tuesday saw me have the hangover from hell vowing never to ever drink again, but vows are made to be broken of course.

Online, I have hardly played at all, just had too many things to do for xmas. The only real thing of note was managed to come 58th in the Stars World Blogger tourney, which got me a few step 3 ticket for my troubles, not much to shout about I know, but it was free, so can't grumble.

So its all go for xmas now, can't wait, looking forward to a day in the pub on boxing day, starting off watching ManU at 12:30, hanging on in there to watch the mighty Villa give the Arsenal one up the arse !!!

So a big merry xmas to all of you out there, hope santa emptys his sac all over your lounge....

I hate xmas songs and carols an all that shite, so gonna put up one of of my fave slow songs from one of my fave artists.

Neil Young - Old Man

Learning Curves

2008-12-11T00:23:00.002Z

Playing at the moment while typing this, 6 buyins down. 4.5 of them I am happy with my decisions.

So, question. Should I still be playing. People say you should have a stop gap when you are losing. My stand on it, is if you start making bad decisions, only then should you stop. although, I can honestly say 1.5 buyins I lost were cos of tilt.

I am a very calm person, I control all of my anger and hide it inside. But does this just create a capped volcano awaiting to pop ?? Time will tell.

Sessions like tonight really do make you query why you do it. I think I am doing something fundamentally wrong at the level I am playing at. Someone with my experience should be able to beat this level quite comfortably. I have heard that some people when they move up find it easier, tempted to try this, but could be an expensive lesson.

Already wrote this month off, close to scrapping the years stats as when I look at them, they make me start thinking of what could of been. 5.5k up after 6 months of year and now only 6.2k up............

Just want to start a afresh next year, but why wait. Might just clear my stats and start now !!

Well maybe the weekend..............

If being a good player is Venus, this is how far I am away from it at this very moment (Courtesy of jat7065)

November Pain

2008-12-06T11:31:00.002Z

Bit late with the stats this month and no pretty graph either as I have played cash across a few sites that don't support PT3.

Finished the month in profit for about $340, taking the yearly profit back up to approx $6600.

Hardly played the last two weeks of the month, not sure why really, just could not seem to fit it in, so only played about 15k hands, well short of the 20k target. So def gonna make sure that I hit the 20k hands in December.

Managed to reach Green VIP Level on NOIQ for December and will almost certainly move up to Blue ready for the start of January. The plan is to grind Jan/Feb and hopefully be at the brown VIP level ready for March. Then will see if it really is possible to get up to the Black level. Theres a big jump between Brown and Black, 20k points up to 50K points. Will prob need to be be playing min 40k hands I reckon. Might even add some SnGs to help as well.

December has started off badly, dropping almost 6 buyins in the first few days. The annoying thing is that I don't feel that I have done nothing wrong, just not been paid off when hit and not hitting much else, no bad beats, just slowly leaked away a shed load of cash. I guess this is something that the best cash players just don't do.

Once thing November has taught me is how far I am away from being a decent cash player. As I said in a previous post, it looks like over the year I am going to be slighly down overall on the tables and only in profit due to rakeback and bonuses, some people might say a profit is a profit, but I do want to get to the stage where I am at least a consistant 2ptbb/100 winner when grinding out the hours.

Still feel fairly positive. Have worked out my bankroll plan and goals for next year, will drop those up here in the next few days.

As for todays song, I guess with the title of this entry, there could only be one track to choose.

Guns n Roses - November Rain

Weekend Away

2008-11-27T18:54:00.004Z

Last Saturday saw a break from the drudgery and grind of the online world and a venture into the bright lights of live poker and what a weekend it was.

I quite often visit the laddies forum, which is a home for all the reprobates that started most of their poker life on Ladbrokes. Laddies used to have their own forum, which was very active, but sadly for whatever reason they shut it down. Fortunately, thelodger, one of the forums more active members decided to setup a new forum in homage to the old. So www.laddiesforum.com was born. The commnity spirit on this forum is second to none, it really is like one big happy disfunctional family. Lots of love, lots of rows, a real typical family atmosphere and once your are part of it, it is difficult to not keep popping back to see what is going on.

So, back to the weekend. The forum, decided to organise a live tourney for all to play in. The venue chosen was Dusk Till Dawn (DTD) poker club in Nottingham, a truly magnificent venue for live poker. There were 72 entrants, all members of the forum, with lots of online buddies all raring to have a quiet drink with each other.

I decided, rather wisely, as it happens, to arrive on the Saturday. Others, inlcluding a wild bunch from the Emerald Isle all turned up on the Friday and starting drinking on the lunchtime. As you can imagine a wild time was had by all, including a starter bout in preparation for the Ricky Hatton fight the following night.....They were not a pretty sight on the saturday.

I managed to get a few beers in when booking into the hotel and met a few of my online buddies before heading off to DTD. The club was very impressive and laddies had done a great job sponsoring the event. A few more beers were had, then the tourney started. As I sat down on my table, my immediate thought was, "oh fck, I might as well go home now" My table consisted of - thelodger, spread, RiverMaid, PaulScot1, banksoir, calita-reese (MrsLizard) richlizard and Ken007. At least I could get to the stts early and get some beer down me......

With 5000 starting chips and 30 minute blinds, there was plenty of room for play. I would like to tell you about all of the wonderful plays I made and how I managed to hide all my fears and dominate the table. But....as you can guess, it just didn't happen. In fact, I was completely card dead all of the tourney, considering we started with 5000 chips, I can't remember getting above 7.5k, but somehow managed to hang on until the last two tables eventually going out 18th, with hammy rivering an 8 with J8, vs my A9 push, he had to call, no choice as I was short stacked.

The only real hand of note, was one I won by a technicality. The hand also proves how good the spirit is amongst the community. I think we were down to the last 3 tables and I, like all tourney was short stacked. I had about 2.4k and the blinds were 300/600, I had to make a move. I saw what I thought was emmerson post his Big Blind and I looked down and saw QJ, so I pushed. It was at this point, I realised, emmerson wasn't on the big blind, but had raised UTG, what a twat I was, I was done for. It all folded round to patyp who was on the big blind, who re-raised. I was def fcked now. Emmerson thought for a while and mucked, then the killer punch. patyp had not noticed I had pushed and mucked his cards thinking he had won the hand. The dealer pointed out that I was all in and the chips for mine. Was not my fault, but was expecting summat to all kick off, but no, patyp just accepted the decision with no qualms whatsoever, the only cursing that went on was him kicking himself he had not noticed. I have to take my hat off to him, I think a lot of other people might have reacted differently, so well played patyp, your a credit to the game.

It was shortly after that I met my final demize and went searching for more Winona and some sit and goes, which I found both and continued endulging till 5am when I was deserted by all and had to catch a cab on my own back to the hotel, annoyingly finding at 5:15am, the bar was shut, ffs, whats wrong with this country.

I met so many wonderful people, it would not be fair to single anybody out, but I suggest if you have not paid a visit to the forum, follow the link on the left of the blog (not an affiliated link) and join in what is the wonder of The Laddies forum.

Can't wait till next year.

Crank ya sound up to the max !!!

Slipknot - Duality

Back to Square One

2008-11-17T23:40:00.004Z

I'm conscious that I have not posted for a while, so thought I better put summat up.

After the disaster of last month, as you saw in my last post I got off to a poor start, however, I managed to turn the month around and pull the 4.5 buy ins down to almost 4 buyins up. The annoying thing is, I was not really doing anything that different, just my hands were holding up, its amazing what a difference makes when your 80% fave hands hold out for a change.

Everything was going well, even had a nice little MTT win, see below. Then yesterday the dreaded sunday curse hit again and I dropped 4.5 buyins again, to take the cash back in the read for the month, what the fck is it about sundays and me that just don't seem to get on, I think I am gonna have to stop wearing me pentacles and devil worship tops on the sabbath and wear a nice cosy pullover and some cords, see if that makes a diference.

Anyway, enough whinging. The good news however, is that I have had a small winning session tonight, to put me back in the black on the cash tables and with the MTT win and rakeback, look to be posting a positive month. Managed to obtain Green status on NOIQ and I am on target to hit my goal of 20k hands this month.

Had to stop playing tonight, cos I got a girly headache, but still wide awake as I have had too much coffee, hence I am posting this.

Can't think str8 at the moment cos of headache, so can't even decide what song to end with, so heres a random bookmark from my youtube

Gothic Beauty

Worst Month Ever

2008-11-01T11:35:00.007Z

Thank God October has gone, it ended up being my worst month ever, the hill did not turn into a valley, it just got deeper and deeper. Its strange, I knew months like this last one are always going to happen due to the nature of the game, but I am not sure I was truly mentally prepared for it, I look back over my hands and all the leaks are glaringly obvious, some of the calls I have made in the cold light of day are awful, it is so obvious, I can't believe I did them. I think the main reason for the way I played was a combination of fear and chasing. The bad start made me scared to do all the things I know are right, 3 betting, double barreling in the right spots etc, however, I seemed to replace this with a lot of cold calling and calling bets light in the "hope" that I have my opponent beat, which in most of the cases, I was wrong. I stacked off too many times with TPGK, when I shouldn't really have been in the hand after the turn. I finished the month just under $600 down on the cash tables and $466 down overall, by far my worst month ever. So to rectify this, at 23:55, I left all my tables, reset my filters and spreadsheets, and after midnight I started again with new hope and a fresh outlook on the game. However, after 1/2 hour, I was already two buyins down after the following hands.

Could of got away from this one

Typical Big Blind Stitch Up

The first hand the opponent was taking some strange lines post flop and the Big Blind was 3 betting and squeezing almost every orbit, so I chose to flat call, hoping the big blind would re-pop it back up. The plan completely back fired and looking back his shove should of been an easy fold. The 2nd hand, I had him on an overpair or flush draw, so I was not getting away from that.

I have 18k hands now at 50NL 6max on NOIQ and I am 7 buyins down, running at about -1.8ptbb/100 which is obv not the 3ptbb I wanted to move up. My bankroll has now dropped to 4.8k and I didn't manage to obtain the fpps to move up to level 3 (green) but I will achieve that this month and hopefully even get to level 4 (blue)

Even with nothing going right at the tables, I feel strangely positive. I am going to increase the amount of hands I play, I have set a target of a minimum of 20k hands this month and my goal is to get back level ptbb. I have also decided that I am not going to move up a level until I have 100 buyins for that level (super nitty I know) or I happen to have 50+ buyins and run at 5ptbb/100 over 20k hands, which the way I am playing at the moment, is gonna take some hot run.

So this month, its all about doing something different, a bit like being in a new city for the first time..........

The Jam - Strange Town.

Hell Week

2008-10-29T21:43:00.002Z

Well I guess it is Halloween this week, but it has been pure hell at the tables, probably one of my worst weeks ever, mainly again to my poor play with a few sick beats as well to kick a man when his down. My graph for the month looks like i'm standing on the edge of the grand canyon looking down !! And to cap it all, I came home last night to find water dripping through the spare bedroom ceiling, so being the super DIY man that I am (sarcasm at its best there) I decide to venture in to the loft. Now being blessed with twinkle toes, I decide to tread carefully, so carefully in fact, I managed to put me big fat foot through the bedroom ceiling only once !!! I thought it only happened to muppets in comedy shows !! but I guess it does happen in real life too. Sigh, of course its pissing down tonight and I still haven't been visited by the builders from the insurance people, just hope the bucket holds.

Back the poker, its going to be a big downer this month, especially as I have no bonuses to get, just the rakeback. Had one decent result on MTT, but resulted in only $41 when I came 19/1148 in one of poker stars deep stack tourneys, which for 11 hours work, is not that much of a return.

Not looking forward to posting the months graph up at the weekend, i'm sure you will all have a good laugh, I can just only hope that I can turn the hill into a valley in the next couple of days.

As its halloween this week, I guess its time for a true spooky goth tune, they don't come much better, or longer than this.

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosis Dead

Sunday Blues

2008-10-19T20:50:00.003+01:00

What the fck is it about Sundays that makes me play like a complete cock !!!! Maybe i'm being punished for not going to church, but next sunday I am gonna play MTT's fck the cash tables. After last weeks disaster losing 5 buyins in the evening, I spend the week playing good solid poker, grinding back the losses. Then again this mornings sessions sees me up almost a buyin and back in profit for the month and all is good. The afternoon session, doesn't quite go to plan when like a twat, I can't lay down top pair Queen kicker when its obv that I am beat. I lose just over a buyin, so calm down, go watch Stoke beat spurs (fooking great, love watching the midland teams beat the cockerneys) Then I sit back down and leave me fooking brain upstairs and play like a reet muppet and lose another 5 buyins FFS.............What a complete (insert relevant expletive here)

Still playing one table while writing this, i'm not tilting this time, I actually feel quite calm about it, don't know why, I should be steaming, maybe my tilt control is getting back to how it used to be.

Other news, decided to go the laddies forum DTD bash in November, really looking forward to that, esp as I had to miss the Dream Team Final.

First week of trying to lose weight seemed to go ok. Have not put as much weight on as I thought, I have updated me chart (link on left) Weighing in just over 15st average for the week. Hopefully can see that start to drop.

As I have no tilt or hate in me, todays song can have it instead.....

Rammstein - Du Hast

Tilttttttttttttttttttttttt

2008-10-12T21:18:00.002+01:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Came back from weeks hols, raring to go as I could not even get a mobile signal, so the lappie had no chance !!!

Was full of hope, lost a buyin and a bit on friday with some bad play by me. Played steady yesterday and ground the month back into profit by lunchtime today playing good poker. Then sat down for this evenings session and had one player get on my nerves and let him get to me. He took two buyins off me, and while he did that I lost the plot on the other table as well. Lost 5 buy ins the the space of 1 hours.........Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....Have had to come off to stop me pissing away the rest of me roll on NOIQ. Got less than $600 in there now, wish I had not taken some out, as it really does restrict me moving up to 100NL now and I hate moving money into accounts more than once ffs.....might have to move some back in now.....

Ho Hum

Mustn't grumble..........

Flunk - Blue Monday

World League of Poker TGF Team Challenge

2008-10-01T23:30:00.005+01:00

Right then fish, so you think you can play poker, so you think you have friends (platonic, you need read no further, cos they both obv don't apply to you). Now is the time to prove both. World League of Poker Online have teamed up with TGF poker and created a new team challenge. Details can be found on the team event link on the main WLOPonline website. There are added prizes over the 16 week period, including buyins to TGF's biggest guaranteed tourney for the highest points scorer over the each of the four 4 week periods. So, if you think you can play MTTs give it ago, what have got to lose, except for getting muffed by yours truly and getting a mention on my cooooooooooool blog when my 6 3 sooooooooooooted takes down your AA, ship it !! My team of superstars is in already, ready to take your donkey cash off you, so put your money where your mouth is and get in there and prove me wrong. We are gonna pwn you all !!

For those of you not aware of what WLOP online is about, it is a free to enter league with real cash prizes, if play MTT freezeouts on any of their supported sites, all you have to do once you have registered with the site, is fill in a quick form before your MTT starts and away you go !! its that simple, I even finished 3rd in this months league for some free $$. So as you can see, it really is THAT simple lol. You are stoooopid not to enter.

Anyway, enough blatent brags, oh....hang on, theres more !! I managed to win a second MTT in september. Although this one was not as many runners (only 58ish) it was more of an achievement as it was against the top players on laddies forum, so to beat them in a well structured tourney, I felt, was of a higher standard than the $4 muff fest.

That was the highlight of what was a decent month, Was also up on the cash tables for about 4.5ptbb, but as I played a lot more MTTs last month, I only chalked up just over 4000 hands on the cash tables, this obv left me with not much rakeback or bonuses. But the MTT wins made up for the lack of this and finished the month approx $700 in total up, bringing the total profit for the year to just over $6.7k.

Plan to concentrate more on the cash tables again this month, been watching a series of vids on cardrunners, which have been excellent, so hope to carry this information on to the tables.

Aim for the month is to get enough points to move up to green on NOIQ poker (level 3) and also start playing a few sessions of 100NL to get a feel for what the play is like there. Done some data mining at that level, so will have to have a mooch through the stats to find the feeesh.

Got a weeks holiday from next saturday, spending a week in sunny Yorkshire at a place called Robins Hood Bay, was supposed to be a walking holiday with the the wife and mutt, but as amanda has had an op on her achilles, there won't be any walking. Hopefully, they got 3G up north as I here they have got phones up there these days, so I might be able to fit a bit of poker in on the old lappie given half a chance.

Played a couple of hundred hands today, played awful the first losing a buy in making a few shite calls, but managed to hit my flush after check raising some gruffnut with a nut flush draw and spanking his TPTK on the turn, to stack the foooker. So finished today about $20 up, always nice to start the month with a winning day.

Time for some music now, been stalling putting up a New Order track as they are my fave band an I can't decide which one to put up first. So in the end, just went for my fave and their first. The vids not theirs, but its the best version I could find on You Tube.

New Order - Ceremony.

Fate

2008-09-13T12:12:00.009+01:00

Not posted for a while, mainly as I not had much to say, just plodding along. Been playing on the 6 seaters on NOIQ at 50NL, along with some low buyin MTT's on laddies. All in all, been going quite well. Strangely enough, playing more cash these days has improved my MTT game quite a lot, I think it has bought in that extra aggression and positional awareness that I was missing before. Made the money, in 8 of the 14 I have played this month and made the Final Table in 4 of those. I started off the week with a bad cold, but still managed to drag myself into work. I had a 1/2 day on weds to take Amanda to have her leg sorted after her op last week. Still felt rough, but was looking forward to a night in watching England, then found out it was on Setanta ffs, I was not gonna pay the subscription to watch the game, so the only option was the pub. This turned out, not to be the best option, although I had a great time watching a decent England performance for once, I did not drink that much, but I paid the price. I woke up Thursday morning and the cold had turned into the dreaded Man Flu !! totally full of snot and bones aching like fck. There was no way I could go into work, so had to report in sick and went back to bed. Eventually got up about midday and sat at PC wrapped in a blanket trying to make a bit of dough on the cash tables. didn't play much. But had a couple of nice hands to bring in some nice pots.

Hand 1
Hand 2
Hand 3

The day ended out being my most profitable day so far on the cash tables. Howver being ill also then made me realise, I could not go to my beloved quiz night, so also had to report in sick on that too. Upset me buddy a bit, who just texted back "puff" says it all really. So this is where the fate part of my post comes in. Obviously I never normally play on a Thursday night as I am out, however, tonight I decided to play the laddies $4 high stack and after 5 hours, I managed to win me first NL tourney of the year for a nice $308, not the biggest win ever, but quite satisfying.

Friday mad the money in a couple of MTTs, but nothing special. Also ran into AA twice on the cash tables to get stacked twice, but this is always gonna happen.

Still well up on the month. Still feel like shit. Hopefully will get better soon and can start exercising again, as its getting me down a bit, all this lack of fitness.

So to cheer me up, here is one of my fave songs from when I was a kid. I was a massive Madness fan and this is off their first album.

Madness - Bed and Breakfast Man

August Stats and Dream Team III

2008-09-02T09:54:00.005+01:00

August was a very average month, a profitable month, but again, mainly due to rakeback and bonuses. At least I have knocked all the gadget chasing on the head and have now settled down to try and become a better play, concentrating on the 6 seaters. Finished the month about $550 up overall including MTT's and bonus/rakeback. Also broke through the $6k profit barrier for the year, which at one stage I thought I would never get to. This is slightly annoying as I was $5.1k up after 4 months, and only made $900 in the next 4 months, mainly due to playing like a robot and literally playing the cards only. Now that I have no goals for the year, I can concentrate solely on playing better and learning. Even though I am now rolled for $1/2 I have been watching some of the card runners vids, in particular a Brian Townsend one, which suggests that you move up when you have 30k hands at 3ptbb profit. I have yet to do this. So I will stick to my guns and stay at 25c/50c until I have reached something similar to those figures. I therefore don't expect to make as much profit over the next couple of months as I won't be bonus whoring, but hopefully will get some decent rakeback on the iPoker 6 seaters, rather than nitty 10 seaters on crypto.

Now to the bad news, I have been looking forward to going to the Dream Team Final, for so long now, saved up tons of dosh, booked the hotel room and also bought me train tickets. Then sods law, the wife gets the date to have an op on her foot, which she had yesterday (went ok) So I had to make the horrid decision not to go. I really felt bad for letting my team down, however, they were all so supportive of my decision and made me feel so much better, as I was really down about not going. My team are really a great bunch of people and are proud to have them as my friends. I am sure they will all do themselves proud at the final. Its a shame that the buyins were so big, as I do believe, if all of our team were able to afford to have played every game (I only played about 10) we would have been right up there with the leaders. But I am sure they will do well anyway. So Gooooooooooooooooooooo the Crushed Nutz......Will be thinking of you all weekend, well accept for when I am pissed watching the England game on Saturday night ;-)

Thats it for now, todays song is dedicated to the Dream Team that I am part of as they are all a bunch of "Stars"

Dubstar - Stars

Quiet Times

2008-08-24T15:29:00.002+01:00

Been quite an interesting week. Hardly played any cash poker at all this week. Mainly due to being out on the piss. Was out Weds for England game, Thursday for quiz, Friday played live and Saturday was out with Amanda and my m8 Graham and his wife to be, hes 58 and just proposed !! Dirty old git, and shes 19 years younger than him !!

Anyway, the live poker was a bit of a disaster, was completely card dead all tournament, not having a pocket pair above 77 all night. I managed to hang in there for a fair time though, eventually going out pushing with 22 and be called by the utg limper with A4, of course the tension mounted as he didn't hit his ace till the river of course. Live poker is soooo rigged................

Def want to play more live poker, the standard of play there is truly awful, their are a few good players, but overall, most of um haven't a clue and my biggest mistake is giving them to much respect, If I would of actually hit a hand, you can just value bet them to town, cos if they hit any part of the board, they ain't going anywhere.

So after leaving the casino at two in the morning, still sobre as we did not drink before we got there, I decided I was fcked if I was going to pay £20 for a taxi home, so walked. 3 hours later and 11 miles walked, I had arrived home at 04:55, a very pleasent walk and the most exercise I have done all week !!

On the online scene, not a bad month, up on the cash tables and had a nice result in the laddies 22:45 $4 high stack, coming 2nd losing heads up with 10c2c on a 3 club board, when he had limped with Ac3c. Don't think anyone is gonna fold a flush heads up for a tournie win. Still, 2nd not bad and a nice $130 boost to my laddies roll and some more $$$ to move me up the league table on www.wloponline.com.

The only thing that was bad about the tourney, was the fact that I had forgot how long the tourney lasts, it didn't finish till about 4.20 am and I had to be up for work at 07:15.

Glad its a bank holiday tomorrow, need the extra day off to rest my weary bones, hopefully the wife will let me get away with doing fck all, especially as its my buffday. Yet another year past, god life is going soooooo quick, feels like only yesterday I was looking forward to leaving school. Now I am just looking forward to retirement !!!

So looking back at the "old days" reminds me of the first single I ever spent my hard earned pocket money. So here it is.

Sham 69 - Hersham Boys.

iPod oops

2008-08-17T10:20:00.002+01:00

Made a big boo boo last week, already got the one iPod touch from littewoods, was going along nicely on Betsafe, got the 1500 points, sent in the email, only to find out I had misread it and needed 15,000 points, ffs, what a knob I am. So thats the end of that. Decided not to go the for the other promotions, so moved on to the 6 seaters, playing a bit of 10p.20p on littewoods, but not having much luck, with the fish hitting everything against me, so will prob go back to iPoker soon, just gonna for a couple of days there to see how the rakeback works out playing the 6 seaters there.
.
The health kick has been put on hold, as its party party for the next few weeks. Had a works do last friday, got the all dayer down the pub watching the footy today, its my birthday next week. Then the dream team live final at the beginning of sept. So, fck the diet for the next month. Will try to just keep the training going, so the metabolism keeps up a bit. The positive thinking part is going well, as I am not letting my little losing streak I am on at the moment worry me. Will just keep plodding on. The next step is to stop being so results orientated. Just gotta keep trying to do the right things.

Played a couple of multis again this week, not much luck, but the world league of poker is going well. If you not yet joined, then your mad, free money, great community. So get your arse over to www.wloponline.com its never to late to join.

Just playing a couple of 6 seaters on littlewoods while writing this, getting ready for the big piss up later, getting muffed to fck of course. But no worries. Todays song will help. Sometimes, nothing gets to you, you just want to stand in the middle of the lounge, eyes closed and spin around with not a care in the world, this is the track I like to do it to.

Sophie Ellis Bextor - Murder on the dance floor

Boring Week

2008-08-10T10:57:00.003+01:00

Well, not a lot happened this week, not played too much poker, still not got the 2nd iPod about 70mpp short, but should get these tonight. Played a couple of MTTs but not really got anywhere. Only exciting thing to happen was when I got a Royal Flush but didn't get paid, was hoping my oppo was slow playing his boat, but it was not to be. Heres the hand

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3021467

My m8 Hach (Blue1969) had a great result on laddies last night, coming 2nd in the $50 Rebuy for a cool $3900, hes been playing very well lately and was only a matter of time before he had a big score, hopefully this is the start of the big time for him, def deserves a few big ones, so well play Harry.

Still not decided if i'm gonna go for this usb vid cam bonus on Interpoker, desperate to get back to 6 seaters, started data mining iPoker and laddies to get a bit of info ready for when I do. Might even try a few on Crypto and give platonic a bit of a spanking, I know he loves it ;-)

Been to the cinema twice, saw the mummy 3 on thursday which was ok. Then the Dark Knight yesterday, which considering I am not a batman fan, I was very impressed, def go and see it if you have not already.

So thats it for this week, hopefully next week will be a bit more eventful.

Todays song is by a little known band, first came across them in the 90's I think when my m8 lent me a CD, just good old indie pop.

Lush - Hypocrite

Just not Cricket (+July Stats)

2008-08-03T10:40:00.005+01:00

Well actually, for a change it was cricket. Yesterday I went to see England in a test match for the first time at Edgbaston. Checking the BBC weather site before I left, showed that it was going to be showers all day, but being hard, I decided to still wear me shorts. But as good old Mr BBC is the man in the know, I did not take any sun cream etc. Of course, the sun shone all day and I now have a face like a beetroot, sore as fck, except of course where my sunglasses were, which is still white. Look like kung fu panda at the moment, which when I got back into the pub after the game, amused my drunken buddies no end !!

Still had a great day out, not too much beer in the ground as by 1pm, they had ran out of cider ffs...I was fuming, had to drink lager for the rest of the day, which to me, is only brewed as an emergency backup for the "real" mans drink that is my complex apple brew that is "the bow"

As normal, my presence jinxed the cricket, England started off great in the batting then needlessy cracked. Then got of to a decent start in the bowling to get us into a good position to win the match, but a great batting display by Graeme Smith, stopped what could of been a perfect day out. Still, just being there was good enough for me. The highlight of the whole day had to be seeing all the blokes in fancy dress. Even if you are not a cricket fan, I highly recommend going to a test match just for this alone. The best, to me, had to be about 10 blokes all dressed up as Amy Winehouse, all with the big black wigs, getting the whole of the one stand to sing Valerie, which I believe is one of her songs, was leaving us all in stiches. Nor far from us was the Village People, 7 blokes dresses up as the indian, policeman, motorbike cop, construction worker, the full works. Hats off to them, they looked great. The funniest thing was driving back in the taxi seeing 10 blokes walking down the road all dressed as Fredie Mercury, complete with skin tight lycra shorts and vest and big 70's black porn star moustaches, a truly frightening site indeed.

Thats enough of the fun stuff, now back to reality with Julys stats, quite a big losing month. Was about $400 down at the tables, so ended up about $90 down overall. Can't grumble, though, most of it was my own bad play. Had a good start to the month on Friday however, finishing almost two buyins up. The play this Friday on Crypto, was truly unbelievable, people calling river re raises all in for all there stacks with Ace High !! was truly muppetry of the highest proportions.

Just need another 500 points for the 2nd iPod now, hopefully have this done by weds night, then can change my priorities. However RakeTheRake are doing a promotion on interpoker for a video gadget that looks quite smart, very tempting that one, only 1000mpp over two months as well, could even do that in the background with 1-2 tables, not decided yet.

So looking ahead to a good month, a birthday month for me, so hoping for some nice pressies, even coming up to 41, I still get excited at the thought of opening a nice big pressie on me buffday, I guess some of us never grow up.

Feeling very positive about all things, so todays song is just a fun happy song with a great video.

RHCP - Dani California

The Boring Grind

2008-07-27T12:07:00.002+01:00

Well not much to report this week. Very boring, no big pots only got stacked once when I raised to $3.50 to get rid of a couple of limpers with KK. got one customer, flop came K high but board was all diamonds. He donk led into me for $5, I put him on Ad x or lower set so decided not to fck about and pushed, he insta called and showed my fave hand, the mighty 36 soooooooted for a flopped flush, the board didn't pair and the $100 pot shipped his way. Ho Hum.

Getting very very bored multitabling full ring and it is showing in my stats and play, even playing 5-6 tables I am mooching around the net doing other stuff not watching the tables. Really can't wait until I have got this last iPod, so I can then move off this and do summat else. Even tried doing some MTT's again, but can't take them seriosuly anymore, just keep calling in positon and trying to push people off pots that I shouldn't even be in, although it was sweet when I rr all in in one Tourney with 95 soooooted and muffed someones KK. He was not a happy bunny, especially when I told him he shouldn't be playing that off soooted shite anyway. I think if it was live, he would of give me the old nut......

So, got about 1050 mpp to get before I can stop doing the full ring tables. Hoping to get this done in the next 10 days. Then time to knuckle down and concentrate on improving as a player for the next month or so. Forget about bonuses and all that, although knowin my luck, some other great promotion will come along and fck it up for me. Saying that, tempted to have a stab at the steps on stars to get into the WCOOP events, wouldn't mind getting in to the hi lo event. Seem to have a habit of making the money in big omaha events, so cashing in that could help the old bankroll.

Diet was going great till Friday, had lost 4lb during the week until then, however, I had to pop into my local to drop off some change I had promised to give the landlord. So 10 winonas later and I wobbling up the road, just looking for the food mecca, big curry when I got home online till 5 in the morning and all the good work during the week gone. Need a bit more discipline I think......

Prob gotta go into work this afternoon to fix a problem they have got, being on call is great until you have to go in on a sunny sunday afternoon !! Even more reason to get the fck out of the rat race........

Anyway enough whinging, time to get the blood running round the body and do a bit of stomping, there is not a better song than this one to get the old foot banging on the floor. Needs to be on real loud, so turn it up, annoy the neighbours and bang away.

Rammstein - Links 234

July Update

2008-07-20T12:03:00.002+01:00

Well the astute amongst you would of noticed that I have not talked about how the poker has gone this month. There is a reason for it. I am running bad, when I am not running bad, I am playing like a twat, so I deliberately didn't mention it as not to try and create any negativity. But fck it. When I returned from me holiday, I dropped 6 buyins in the first 3 days to take me to over $300 down. I then grinded in back to be in a profit over the month with the bonuses and rakeback, but lost another 4 buyins over the last two days with some tough luck. But, I am not going to let it get to me, in most cases I am doing the right thing. Here are some of the biggest losing pots, I can't show the big winning pots, cos there ain't any !!!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918834
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918836
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918838
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918842
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918846
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918847
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918850
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2918851

One piece of good news is that I have qualifed to receive the free iPod touch from the rake the rake littlewoods promotion. So I have now moved on to the rakerebate betsafe promotion for the same thing. so I should have two. I should complete this by early August, I can then stop multitabling the full ring tables on Crypto and seriously start looking at playing 6 max again, which I have drifted away from. Looking forward to the change.

On the MTT front, I have played a few more this month because of http://www.wloponline.com/ and have enjoyed it, made the final table of the laddies 19:30 $4 high stack, was sitting ok with 8th left, found KK in the big blind. UTG who had me slightly covered pushed all in with AQ and I called, he spiked the A on the turn and Goth was on his way. If that would of held up, I would of been second in chips and would of probably run away with it then.

The Circle is going well however and lost a couple of pounds this week and still feeling very positive. Gonna dye me hair black this afternoon for the first time, so gonna be weird looking in the mirror.

I have also thought about doing a bit of dancing to help the weight loss, inspired by todays video, turn up the sound and get your dancing boots on.

Pendulum - Slam

Thinking Time

2008-07-13T20:17:00.003+01:00

Been a while since my last post. Had a weeks break in Spain, which gave a lot of time for thought. Its amazing what goes through your mind, when you have enough time to day dream in the sun, without a care in the world and the only worry is whether the battery in your iPod will last the week cos you forgot your usb cable.....

So, after all of these thoughts, what conclusions did I come to. Well here they are.

1. I am a fat bastard.
2. I am not as good a poker player as I want to be.
3. I hate working on the 9-5 rat race (actually 24x7 as I do a lot of on call)

So, what the fck am I gonna do about it.....Well its obvious something has to change and it has to change pretty soon. In fact all 3 items are related in the fact, that if I fix number 1, number 2 will improve and if number 2 improves to where I want it to be by 2012, number 3 can then be eliminated, which in turn gives more time to spend on number 2 and number 1. In essence it is a self healing circle.

So, how to deal with number 1. Well, if you are unfortunate to know me fairly well, you would of been bombarded recently with pics of me in my youth, including the now famous "speedo" pic, which can be seen by all on my facebook profile, its there for all to see if you girls want some good "rabbit" material to get you going ;-)

So, the detox starts tomorrow. Along with a new fitness regime and positive thinking plan. Once the fat starts going and the body becomes toned, the confidence level will increase. This then in turn will help the poker, as I a am a firm believer that poker is very much a confidence game. Hopefully this will then see the flow of $$$ come in at a faster rate.

The ultimate plan is to then have 6 months living expenses in the bank by summer 2012 and then seriously look at giving poker a go full time, as the thought of doing a "normal" job for the next 20 years till I retire scares the shit out of me. Life is just to fcking short and I feel that I have wasted a fair bit of the 40 years I have spent on this planet so far. I reckon I need to be pulling in $4000 a month to match my current income, but if I can pay off some of my mortgage by then, I maybe able to live off less than that.

So tomorrow is the first stage of putting those daydreams into a reality and as we all know, if you give up on your dreams, you die.

Todays choice of song, to me, is fairly apt to this post. My interpretation of the vid is all about how times change. Look back for inspiration, but always keep your eye on what is ahead, as YOU DO HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE IT !!!!!!!!!!

Lost Prophets - Last Summer

June Stats

2008-06-29T22:13:00.004+01:00

A little early, I know, but I am sneaking off for a week in Spain at the in laws in the early hours of Monday morning and will be having a complete week away from the tables. Bit annoying in the fact, that whenver you are have a nightmare at the tables and need a break, you never can. I am running ok at the moment, so don't really want to stop playing, but I am sure the break will do me good. Not leaving poker completely, as I intend to do fck all for a week, sit by the pool and read Harrington on cash 1+2. Hopefully, this will fill me full of enthusiasm when I come back on a learning spree. Also gonna start a mini detox on my return. Can't do a complete detox, cos I love me cider too much, whats the point in living longer if you can't have ya fave tipple now and then.

Overall a good month. Up on the cash tables, up on the on few MTT's I played, 1/2 decent bonuses, making a total profit of approx $780. Also only need another 100 or so points for the iPod classic on Littlewoods, but will prob multi table a lot when I get back to go for the iPod touch, as I promised the wife she could have it.

Don't forget the start of July the new league starts and there is free money up for grabs, so check out http://www.wloponline.com/ for futher details. I am off for the first week, so you can get a head start if you think you are good enough.

Only a short post today, as I gotta leave for airport at 4.30am, ffs, normally only ever see that time when I am still playing poker !!!

So to relax you, well, when I mean relax, this track is really one for you splif heads out there as most of Nick Caves tracks are, its from a great album called Murder Ballads, which as you can guess by the title of the album, is all about death. So, switch on, spark up, close your eyes and listen to one of the weirdest lyrical masterpieces out there.......

Nick Cave - Staggerlee

-------------

2008 Profit = $5565.62

Todays Weight 14st 11 :-(

The Comeback Trail

2008-06-21T15:40:00.003+01:00

Poker is such a strange and wonderful game, last week I was on an all time low, seriously thinking about taking a long break from the game. This week, its a case of how can I give up my job and do this full time....My hands have been holding, the fish have not been getting paid off and the bonuses are coming in thick and fast. Over the last week, I have gone from being down overall to being currently over $500 up, it truly is crazy.

The plan of playing the 6 seaters has been put back on hold for a bit as I am mainly playing on littlewoods to get the iPod at the moment. So just plodding along on the 10 seaters, its amazing how profitable can be when you actually concentrate on what you are doing, which I think is the big difference in my play over the last 7 days.

Decided that I am gonna need a new car next year as my trusty MG ZS, is starting not to be so trusty anymore, so I have now set a new aim, of getting enough into my poker savings account to buy a new car next March, nothing fancy, cos i'm skint, probably just a Corsa or Astra, or summat of that ilk.

Other news, I have to mention my wife Amanda, who this afternoon, has just completed a 14 mile trek round the Brecons in the pissing down rain in order to raise some money for the British Heart Foundation. So a big pat on the back to her and I am very proud of her for this achievement, as it is a tough little challenge.

So all is happy in Goths little world at the moment, I even don't have a hangover after getting completed twatted last night, which I am again stunned at.

Time for todays music lesson. As you know I am a big Joy Division fan and I think it is criminal when people try to remake some of their songs, however, there is the odd exception. Nine Inch Nails did a remake of the classic JD song Dead Souls and I have to admit, I even prefer it to the original. Put this song in a film as dark as The Crow and you create an amazing atmosphere.

Nine Inch Nails - Dead Souls

Suffering

2008-06-14T09:57:00.002+01:00

Hardly played any poker at all this week and when I did, I lost. No bad beats, just more plain simple cock play. The worst was losing two buy ins, in a two hour period. I was just playing one table BUT, I spent the whole two hours sorting out Poker Tracker 3 while I was playing, experimenting with the HUD and importing my old hand histories etc. What the fck am I doing. I can't even remember any of the play on my table, so could not have had any reads or anything. So I got exactly what I deserved. Also started playing on littlewoods to try and get a free iPod in one of their promotiosn, so been mulitabling on there in the background, without watching whats going on at all. Not good.

My body is also telling me there is summat wrong, been a bit slack with my eating habits lately and its starting to show. I think I am gonna have to go on some sort of detox, however, got a house party tonight for one of my best buds 50'th (old fcker) so it is gonna have to start tomorrow.

Got a week away at start of July, I never thought I would need a break from everything as much as I do at the moment, I want to get away from everything and just do nothing for a while.

For todays track, as I am so depressed at the mo, I thought I would put up one of my fave tracks of all time to try and cheer me up. Also I think this is one of the best vids ever made. RHCP - Californication........

World League of Poker Online

2008-06-08T12:00:00.005+01:00

Right then peeps, so you think you are good at poker ??? Well now is the time to boost your ego and prove it. There is a new league been set up by laddies regular player Curly69. Check out http://www.wloponline.com/ for all the details you need. And the best thing is, initially to get the interest in the league it is FREEEEEEE AND there is free $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ up for grabs. So what have you got to lose. Once the league is up and running, there will be a small regular fee to boost the prize funds. Hopefully once the numbers build up the prize funds will get bigger and bigger and the community and rivalry will flourish. There are also real $$$ prizes for the yearly tournie. You can enter on a number of sites, some of which are yank friendly, so no excuses, so what are you waiting for check out http://www.wloponline.com/ cos if you play MTT's anyway, why not enter for $0 and win real $$ seems stupid not too. Hope to see you all there. PS, this is not an affiliate link of mine, just mentioning it cos its a great idea and should be fun.

So on to this months poker, not played that much so far, but I have been playing only 6 seaters and I am up overall on the month, so quite happy at mo after last months disaster. Definitely going to carry on with this till the end of this month, when I then go on Holiday for a week, can't wait. I have just bought Harringtons cash books 1+2, so looking forward to doing fck all round the pool reading those for a week, then coming back and muffing it up.

Played the Stars 17:00 deep stack again last night, I have made the cash the last two times coming 92nd and 42nd in 1000 runner fields. Last night it started great as I got dealt AA on the 2nd hand, with the blinds at 10/20, 30 minute levels and 5000 chips, I raised to 100 from ep, this guy goes all in for 5k, I obv call and poor sod has KK. So double up straight away and never really looked back. Plenty of room to make moves. So 10 hours later, yes 10 fcking hours. its down to the last 14 and I decide to make a move, when the serial raiser on my right raises again (he is raising 2-3 times per orbit) I repop him with my AQ and he instantly comes over the top, I still had 100k+ chips left with the blinds at 3k/6k so could of laid it down, but decided he was at it or had a mid pair so called and he flipped AcKc, no miracle Q for me and I went out 14th. I was quite disappointed to be fair, as I thought I had played really well, only making one mistake before that when I bluffed the river on a 9966T board with 22, hoping to push the initial raiser off his hand, but he was correct in thinking his QQ was good, does he not know I am a fcking rock lool. But happy with my MTT game. Will def be sneaking a few more of these in, especially with the league starting next month. Starting to enjoy the MTTs again, does make a change from grinding out the cash tables.

EDIT:- a big thanks to lexus for staying with me on msn till the early hours, he had even run out of beer by then, a truly noble gesture ;-)

On to todays track. One for the oldies, well peeps my age anyway. Every now and then you hear a track on the radio from the past which brings back good memorys, gets the blood going and the old foot tapping. This is one of those songs for me. We were all teenagers once.....

May Stats (Warning Steep Slope Ahead)

2008-06-01T01:03:00.005+01:00

Well, glad to get May over with. It started off bad and got worse. I definitely started chasing it too much. I managed to grab hold of meself half way through, then hit the bad beats. First half of month, was def my fault, after that, things just didn't go my way. But at the moment, I still feel strangely confident, a new month brings new hope. So I am gonna put this month behind me and move on. Luckily rakeback and bonuses helped, so only finished about $375 down overall.

Reached a milestone during the month as well. Got 100k hands played now in my poker tracker db. first 100k split, 15k at 100NL, 79K at 50NL and 7k at 25NL, yeided $724 profit at PTBB 0.91. not the greatest stats ever, but winnning over a decent margin. 80k of these were at Full ring. Interestingly enough, I filtered out my 6 seaters sats, and these were about 18k hands played (nearly all at 50NL) and was running at PTBB 2.96. So I think it is pointing me somewhere, although this is not a big enough sample yet to be fair.

This month has however made me think about poker more in the long term. I think setting a financial goal of $10k winnings over the year, is not the right thing to do. So I have dumped that goal totally now. All that matters now, is building up the roll and becoming a better player. I have been guilty of being uber nitty and chasing bonuses and rakeback long enough. So for June, I am going to try and play soley on 6 seaters. 2 tables max at a time, and try and focus. I intend to post more hands on the CR forum and ensure I watch a lot more of the vids that are available. Definitely gonna be more qulaity rather than quantity. Playing 6 seaters will give me more hands and rakeback anyway, so that will help.

I have also, just got knocked out he 17:00 (GMT) Stars $11 Deep Stack tourney. I played this a couple of weeks ago and came 92/976. I do like the tourney, 5000 starting chips and 30 min blinds, gives great space for play. Tonight, I think I played some of my best MTT play for a while and eventually went out in 46th place out of 1052 entrants, when losing a race with TT vs AK all in pre. But I was happy with my game, made some great laydowns and one great bluff with 57 sooted, getting somone to lay KK down on a Q high flop, after I had 3 bet him pre....lol I told him it was AA and he was dead happy with his "pro laydown"

Really looking forward to Junes play, even after such a disasterous month, sometimes typing all this blox out, even if no one out there ever reads it, just helps ease the mind a bit..

Managed to get a $25 piece of that muff amatay, in his quest for $10k on FT sngays. Looking forward to getting $50 back ;-)

As its late, its gotta be time for some proper "wakeup" music. From what I remember this always used to be the kicking out song at the club I used to go to in brum (edwards) it was difficult to leave the dance floor after this song had been on without being covered in blood, pref someone elses, but quite often your own....Rock on

Nirvana - Smells like Teen Spirit (Dedicated to Dirk and Lenny to prove there is life after Neil Diamond)

-------------------
2008 Profit/Loss = + $4787.31

Poker Bankroll = $5533

Todays Weight = 14st 10 (Still !)

The nightmare continues

2008-05-26T11:39:00.007+01:00

I think I am going to have to stop mentioning my good days on this blog, as soon as I do, I get a quick slap around the face and the poker gods turn on me. Not had a winning day since and the losses that I clawed back have all be lost again with interest, currently nearly $800 down at the tables and about $450 down overall, definitely my worse month ever since I started playing poker. So bad in fact I posted my stats on the cardrunners forum, for comments. A few educated replies came back and it looks like basically I am playing to nitty, so when I have big hands, I just don't get paid off and when I hit the 2nd nuts, I am always paying people off, or getting outplayed post flop cos of my nittiness. So yesterday, I dropped to 50NL and opened my game up a bit. I must admit, I think I was playing a lot better, I went from playing a 9/5/2 style to a 12/10/4 style of play at full ring, quite a big difference. I still managed to post a losing day, but this was not really down to my bad play, but down to beats and coolers, which I can live with. These are the biggest losing hands over the last few days.

Hand 1 - Maybe weak limping utg with 77, but was intending to call a small raise to set mine, perfect flop, I put the villain definitely on a king, so decided to push, so I didn't have a tricky decision on the turn should a dange card come on it, he called anway and spiked.

http://weaktight.com/210756

Hand 2 - Bad beat or bad play ? You tell me, must admit, I didn't notice the board pair on river when I called (fcking fish I am)

http://weaktight.com/210759

Hand 3 - Bit of a cooler on this one, however still can't understand why I pushed on the river when it was fairly obvious I was beat, in fact 3/3. Very bad play on river, I liked my turn play as I was trying to force out any flush draws if they had a set, so be it and I still had outs. But def should of checked the river and folded to a shove, any thoughts ?

http://weaktight.com/210764

So, its back to the tables tonight, try and keep playing what I think is right and maybe review where I am heading at the end of the month, good job I had those couple of 1k wins at the start of the year, otherwise I think I might be giving up for a while.........

So on to the music vid. One thing you can't do is limit yourself to only listening to one genre of music. If you like a song, be man enough to admit it, just cos your a big greasy rocker, don't mean you can't sing along to Madonna. Not sure where I first heard this song, but it hit me when I did and is one of my favourite songs of all time. It is quite apt, as at the moment, when it comes to poker, I am in a "world of it"

Hurt - Johnny Cash

More footy......

2008-05-21T18:33:00.005+01:00

Well, what a night it could be ahead, gonna leave for pub in about 20 mins to watch the champions league final. Booked the next two days of work, which could give an indication of my intent to give Winona some serious stick. Hopefully it will be a great game, and even more hopefully the mighty reds will prevail. I have a pecking order when it comes to supporting footy. England over everything, then the Mighty Villa. Then it comes down to my secondary teams, if Villa can't win owt, i'll always plump for Man U, dunno why, but it annoys my mates, so thats a good enough reason in itself. Then it will probably be Liverpool, cos they were winning everything when I was a little lad, although I was at Villa Park in Dec 1976 when we spanked them 5-1, what a night that was ;-) Then I guess its Midland Teams, Northern Teams, all other teams in the country and finally and only if I have to the London teams ;-)

Poker picked up a lot lately, been 4 tabling iPoker 50NL full ring and have managed to pull another $200 back out of the losses and have had four winning says on the trot, not big winning days, but I still am making dumb hero calls. This hand was another small blind, big blind classic.

http://weaktight.com/204873

After he called my turn bet, there was only two hands I put him on, two pair or a flush draw. The river card bought possiblities for both of them to beat my my made straight, but I still call an all in river shove, I swear I am going to cut my mouse finger off one if these days.

But still plodding on.

Now for todays music lesson, for those of you have been reading my blog from the start, you will know I go married last year at Bellagio in Vegas. I also had a big pissup in England when I got back, where I had to have the dreaded "first dance" and it was not gonna be fcking Titanic, or whatever the song was.....After a long thought, I decided to beg my wife to let me choose and she eventually agreed. If you are anywhere near my age (40) you would probably have listened to the immortal legend that was John Peel between 10-12 during the week nights, it was on his show, I first stumbled across one of the most influential bands ever....Joy Divsion. Peely used to have a christmas top 50 every year, these were the top 50 best ever songs ever made, this song used to be in the top 2 for many years. So today I give you "Atmosphere" by Joy Divison. Oh, and don't ask me about the video, cos I haven't got a scooby doo.........

Goth

The FA Cup

2008-05-17T14:15:00.003+01:00

Today is normally one of my biggest piss up days of the year, the joy of Wembley watching two of the lands finest teams battle it out for cup glory. However, today is Portsmouth and Cardiff, what the fck is all that about......one team isn't even fcking English !!!! (mind you, neither are Arsenal if had got there !!)

But still, fck it, the pub beckons, so I am typing this full of coffee, buzzing like an Ann Summers Rabbit on the vinegar strokes. Ready to give Winona a good whipping.

Poker not been too bad last two days, managed to claw $100 or so back.

Also decided to try and take the bloggin a bit more seriously, well, make it more fun. I looked back at some of my original posts from when I first started and it looked quite fun, now it just seems to be all about poker and whinging about me luck, so no more of that shit, gonna try and spruce it up a bit, maybe someday even reach the mighty heights of Amatays blog, which i think is one of the best around.

I have also heard on the grapevine, that you are all a bunch of pussies, when it comes to the old music front, so I have decided to take it on myself to "educate" you all on what it is all about.

So here is the first helping, from a little known band called Rammstein, I have seen them twice in the last couple of years, and outside of the Pistols and New Order, they are the best live band I have seen.

You will notice that in this vid, there is a fooking amazing lady as Snow White, when I saw them at the MEN, this girl who looked even better than the one in the vid, walked up the steps towards me in her silk Snow White outfit, as my tongue hit the floor and I started gargling, I then suddenly remembered my wife sat next to me, staring at me in amazment, I braced myself to for the slap I knew was coming, but no, not pain, not even an evil look. She just looked at me with a smile and said "I know, I must admit, I would too" It was then, a two hanky toilet trip was immediatley required............

Crank it up the max and enjoy.
Goth

Still playing like a muppet

2008-05-14T18:46:00.002+01:00

I think this month has made me realise what a journeyman player I am. I don't seem to be learning from my mistakes. Overall I am a break even cash player at the moment, only making any money from rakeback and bonuses.

I think this hand says it all.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2608930

Looking back at it, it was obvious that I was beat. utg limper who it tight as a nats chuff and has a post flop overall agression factor of abuot 0.5. What the fck was I thinkin, my heart was hoping and telling me he had limped with Ahxh and had the nut flush, but my brain was screaming "Hes got a bigger boat !!! " get out of dodge. Unfortunately, the bit that controls my mouse clicking finger obviously is not connected to my brain. I guess the only thing I have learnt is that a year ago, I would of moaned about this as a bad beat, cooler type hand. I now recognize, this was just pure and simple fish play by myself. Please feel free to comment on the hand as you feel fit

Currently approx $590 down at the tables and $330 overall after bonuses etc. so a pretty poor month.

I keep spouting on about all the things I should be doing, studying more, training more, eating more healthy, the truth is, I am just not doing these things, its almost as if I think somehow its all gonna just click and fix itself. Well believe, me it ain't and unless I pull me finger out two things are gonna happen, 1. Lose the bankroll. 2. Leave the earth prematurely in a wooden box. Somethings got to change in my life and its got to change soon.

Ideas on a postcard.
Goth.

Oh Dear

2008-05-05T18:21:00.002+01:00

Well, what can I say, it was only a few posts ago I was saying how good life was and that all was well on the tables. Well the poker gods must read my blog and have come and give me a smack on the arse to teach me a lesson. I currently am about $450 down on the month so far. A harsh lesson indeed. It all seems to have started after I found the perfect table, with the perfect player on my immediate right, a complete looney, a dream of a player to have position on, it was just wait for the hands then take his money. These were the two hands in question.................

http://weaktight.com/185731

Maybe I could of got away from that one, however, this one almost made me vomit on me desk.....

http://weaktight.com/185733

This was against the same player, and as you can see by the chipstacks on the 2nd hand, he had already blown the first chunk he muffed off me. He then proceeded over the next 20 mins the liberally distribute my money to all the players on the table except me, before leaving with $0.

Puds commented about variance on my previous post, and I really do now think that we invent our own variance. The next couple of days, has lead me to question my game and I have changed a lot of the things I used to to do to tick over the profits. I have been playing more pots, I have been double barrelling out of pure agression, rather than stepping back and trying to think why my continuation bets have been called, this has lead to a large leak in my game. I tried to then counter act it by tightening up a little, this corresponded with walking into monster hands. So then, I started calling down lightly when I had hit any part of the board in an effort th outplay my opponents on later streets, when I did this, they always had the goods. Hence the reason I am in the shit that I am this month. I have a couple of bonuses and rakeback to come, but this is not going to even halve my losses this month. And again the point is, I want to be winning at the tables, not relying on bonuses and rakeback to make the profits come in.

I have not had any winning sessions at all this month, and its amazing how it affects the confidence to make the moves that you think are right, this in turn makes me miss a lot of value when I actually do hit a hand. I'm also not sure I was psychologically ready for the bigger amounts that you lose when playing at a higher level. The nit in me wants to move back down to 50NL (although the hands above were at that level as a tester of iPoker) 100NL is where I should be playing with my bankroll, but at times like these, 100NL maybe is not where I should be with my level of skill.

A frustrated Goth.

April 2008

2008-05-01T14:32:00.002+01:00

Well, as you can see by the graph, April was a real rocky ride, my jump up to 100NL Full Ring, made a real dent at the start of the month with a couple of massive bad beats for full stacks, but I kept plodding on, doing the things that I know were right, hoping the poker gods would turn back and they did. The month eventually ended in a nice profit with the bonuses/rakeback, but yet again, I still am disappointed with the wins actually at the table, too many loose calls when I think I am beat, but my ego hates to think it is being bluffed on the river and makes me call....This is an area of my game I really need to work on.

Overall finished the month $617 up with everything added in, not above the magic $1k, but considering I was $500 down at the tables at one stage during the month I am relieved to say the least.

The other thing that stood out, was the fact that I only played about 11k hands, I guess I was out on the piss more than I thought. Luckly, this month there is not a lot on in me social calendar, I am playing live at Broadway Casino in Brum this friday, then there is the champions league final to look forward to (cmon the reds !) so I have no excuses for not getting the hours in this month.

I have also made my decision on where to play. I have plumped for NOIQ poker, as the bonus scheme seems quite attractive, I am only gonna play 6 seaters on there and I have a new nickname, which I am gonna keep a secret, so you muffs don't know who I am, so watch out ;-)

I am also dropping down to 50NL on their for this, until I build up some info on players and get about 50k hands behind me, as I have not played any short handed for quite a while and need to get back in to the swing of things, without worrying about the $$$

I will still play some 100NL full ring on Sun to get the $200 bonus, its a shame about the numbers, as I do like the site, if only the yanks would see some sense......

Also hope to use May to really buckle down and get some training in, I have read quite a few articles/blogs relating to fitness and poker, its hard work sitting on ya arse for 6 hour multi table sessions, so need to up the fitness levels to get there, + I don't want to look like a fat cnt at this years Dream Team Final in September, like I did last year, had enough stick as it is ;-) Therefore I aim to be below 14st by the end of May.....watch this space...cough cough.

Goth

-------------------

2008 Profit/Loss = + $5163.98

Todays Weight = 14st 10 (Doh !)

Where to play

2008-04-30T15:12:00.003+01:00

Decisions, decisions, decisions........Where to play my poker.

As much as I like playing on sun poker, the bonuses are good and the rakeback is great, there just isn't enough players to go around, most of the tables of full of regs, grinding out bonuses, so there is a fight for the fish, and when the fish get lucky, we all tend to just feed off ourselves when they scarper off into the distances. I have been off work this week, and have not really been able to play much at all during the day at all, due to lack of tables, which is very frustrating, so frustrating that I even found myself clearing the garage out at one point...ffs what is all that manual work about !!!!! def not for me, the only time I normally need to wash me hands is after a good scratching session on me farmers...........

Anyway, I have been scouring the forums and emailing various people for info on where best to play, but I still can't seem to find the right answer. A move back to iPoker seems to be one of the best options, but memories of horrendous beats of laptop smashing proportions are still fresh in my mind. Also, if I do decide to move back to iPoker, a decision where to play is still not an easy one. Rumours of under the table deals for players are rife, most of which are illegal, trying to sift through these is doing me bonce in !! NOIQ seems to be favourite at the moment, but I am still awaiting replies to a few emails sent out.

Had a decent few days on the tables, didn't play saturday/sunday as was on the piss both days, and in bed for 21:30 shitfaced, oh the joys of "when the wifes away" but the results from friday + Monday have put me well back in the black for the month and moved me above $5k profit for the year, which is always nice to see on the spreadsheet.

Will play for a few hours tonight to try an eek out a bit more profit and rakeback, but I have caught a cold and am sniffling like twat at the moment, so will have to wait and see how it goes.

Goth

Bad Beat Bonanza !!!

2008-04-21T12:32:00.003+01:00

Well, you may think this is gonna be another bad beat fck off whinge post, well its not. The only thing I have to moan about is the fact that I won the hand and my opponent was short stacked.

As you can see by this hand, it was sooooooooo sweet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1785464

Its the first time I have seen a bad beat jackpot hit, and even better I was one of the hands involved.

I was convinced my opp had KQ and thought they were trapping, but woohoo, even better. Was slightly annoyed that it was only $250, but I guess the bonuses go a lot quicker on Crypto as they can happen on any table including the omaha ones, and there is no contribution towards the rake.

Been winning on the tables a bit as well over the last few days, so with this bad beat jackpot I am back on winning ways for the month. Its fcked up me PT stats a bit, and I can't be arsed to go into it and edit the hand as it put the $250 as part of the winning pot, so me graph gonna look strange at the end of the month, but who cares as long as it is above 0$.

Also the good news is that I am now offically in profit more this year than I won in the whole of last year, so looking good at the mo to reach my $10k target. (Hope I don't regret that)

Weight also went down this week (fck knows how, was on the piss 4 nights out of the 7)

And to cap it all, we spanked the scum 5-1 to edge them nearer to relegation where they belong.

Loads more footy on this week, so gonna be another 3 nights down the pub this week. Then ManU vs chelsea on saturday lunchtime, which means 12 hours in the pub. AND then Villa on sky on sunday versus Everton, fck me I think I'm gonna need a new liver.

Off work all next week, so will be on a detox/training week.

Life is good at the moment, wonder what is gonna come along and fck it up.............

Goth.